Bridge Promenade by Daniel Berry Austin. ca. 1888. Collection: Brooklyn Public Library.

Next Stop, BMA: There are many paintings and photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge in the BMA. Some are not on view, but several are, including this painting by Georgia O'Keefe. Get a floorplan to find this painting and learn more about it in Museum Labels.

	Brooklyn Bridge by Georgia O'Keefe. 1949. Oil on masonite.

See it for yourself: The Brooklyn Bridge has one of the nicest pedestrian walkways in the city. It was intended to be more like a park than a street. Take a trip there and bring your sketchbook. What buildings do you recognize in Brooklyn and Manhattan? Look up at the towers and cables. How do they make you feel? What do they make you think? How is this bridge different from the Manhattan Bridge right next to it? Write down or draw your observations.

Brooklyn Bridge No. 6 by John Marin. 1913. Etching. Collection: Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Nature's own: Learn how a spider builds its web in Animal Homes and compare its methods to those used to build the Brooklyn Bridge!

Do-it-yourself: Try your hand at building a bridge! Visit Build-a-Bridge.  

What do you think: If you live in Brooklyn or New York you may have seen the reconstruction of the Williamsburg Bridge. Workers are removing old parts of the bridge as they add new parts. The whole process will take 12 years, almost as long as it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge. By the time the work is finished, it will look like an entirely different bridge! If you were an engineer planning the reconstruction, would you think it were easier to reconstruct the bridge this way? Or would you think it easier to completely dismantle the old bridge and build a new one? Go to the Bibliography/Webliography to find a site about the Williamsburg Bridge reconstruction.