House Garden 
now be in a much better condition to carry 
out those improvements of traffic facilities 
which are now necessitated. 
Of the proposed new bridges, one—the 
Delancey Street Bridge—is practically com¬ 
pleted. Work has been commenced on the 
Blackwell’s Island Bridge and the Manhattan 
Bridge. The North River Bridge is still 
untouched, although much needed. Fortu¬ 
nately, the last change of administration 
placed the work of the Bridge Department 
in the hands of Commissioner Lindenthal, 
one of the ablest engineers of the country, 
and the result is a marked improvement 
on the original designs. In the Manhat¬ 
tan Bridge he has achieved, in connection 
with Messrs. Palmer and Hornbostel, in 
whose hands were placed the architectural 
details, a veritable triumph. As the distance 
to be covered by such bridges is so great and 
the bridge must, 
of necessity,be in 
one span, the en¬ 
gineering prob¬ 
lem is so difficult 
that any thingbut 
artistic results 
have heretefore 
been obtained. 
Even the great 
Firth of Forth 
Bridge, consid¬ 
ered an engineer¬ 
ing triumph, is a 
monstrosity 
from an artistic 
pointofview;and 
it looked for a 
time as if the new 
bridges in New 
York were to be, 
in a measure, 
open to the same 
criticism. 
Through the 
genius of Com¬ 
missioner Lin¬ 
denthal this has, 
however,happily 
been averted. In 
the Manhattan 
Bridge he has 
devised a modifi¬ 
cation of the stiffened suspension principle 
which is not only economical in execution, 
but far stronger than the old form of suspen¬ 
sion bridge. He has demonstrated conclu¬ 
sively the truth of the theory that utility and 
beauty go hand in hand. While the original 
design contemplated a bridge of four tracks, 
the completed one provides for six tracks. It 
also calls for the use of twenty-five per cent, 
less material in its construction, and will be 
executed at a saving of one-quarter of a mill¬ 
ion of dollars from the original estimate. The 
artistic success of the design will be seen at a 
glance of the eye. Instead of having, like 
the Delancey Bridge, two piers for each ter¬ 
minal of a hideous steel cage construction, 
the Manhattan Bridge has four delicately de¬ 
signed uprights to support the suspending 
cables. The stiffening needed for the sup¬ 
port of the road-bed is reduced to a mini¬ 
mum, and the 
entire design, 
with its si m p 1 e 
but ornamental 
a nchorage, 
makes one of the 
finest bridges 
that has yet been 
projected, and 
answers once and 
for all the ques¬ 
tion as to the pos¬ 
sibility of pro¬ 
ducing an artistic 
creation in steel 
construction. 
In the endeav¬ 
or to solve the 
problem of pas¬ 
senger traffic it 
was suggested 
that not only 
should the pres¬ 
ent scheme of 
underground 
transit,as devised 
by the R a p i d 
Transit Com¬ 
mission, be car¬ 
ried out, but that 
the city should 
contemplate the 
eventual tunnel- 
MONUMENT TO COMMEMORATE EVENTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 
Designed by Bruce Price for the intersection oj Broadway and Fifth Avenue 
303 
