Put on your Sunday best and join us for a morning walk over the Brooklyn Bridge this fine day in 1905 New York.
Men and women can be seen walking in both directions. Two purposeful men, businessmen perhaps, stride towards the camera. Behind them two women in fine dresses and hats stroll arm in arm.
You can see the city skyline in the background. The giant skyscrapers of today would have seemed impossible to the people of this proud city at its height of power and prosperity. And yet these people and this era laid the foundation for the modern New York.
It is also interesting what you do not see in this picture. There is no litter. Everything seems calm and unhurried. The men wear suits and the women are dressed elegantly. Over a century of progress has brough new technologies and building techniques, but it has also closed our window on this world forever, leaving only photos to show us a world that once was.
