BROOKLYN BRIDGE WITH
PIER 21, PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
From South Street between Peck Slip and Dover Street
MARCH 30, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 225
Brooklyn Bridge with
Pier 21, variant image
Abbott took this view of the Brooklyn Bridge (1883) on the same day she photographed the Lower East Side from the Manhattan Bridge. She studiously avoided a panoramic view of the bridge and close-ups of its cables, which by the 1930s had become cliched symbols of modernity. Instead, she portrayed the bridge as part of the working waterfront by showing the pier shed of the Pennsylvania and B & O Railroads.
The photograph also features an antiquated horse cart, its primitive structure providing a stark contrast to the triumph of modern engineering overhead. Abbott exposed two negatives of this scene--one taken with a wide-angle lens, which included a horse hitched to the cart--and chose the long-lens version, which compressed space and offered a better view of the Manhattan Bridge in the distance.