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.
It is also interesting what you do not see in this picture. There is no litter. Everything seems calm and unhurried.
Here is an expanded view of the people in the background.
One thing is certain. This was a happy moment in the history of the world and of New York. The Gilded Age was still in full swing, and the country was making incredible economic and social progress. New inventions such as the telephone, the automobile, the aircraft, the movie projector, the record player were revolutionizing the way we lived. It was a time of optimism and the world had not yet been scarred by two world wars.
The people in the photograph could not have known that less than two years later the world would be plunged into a murderous world war, which would pervert all of these scientific achievements for a sinister purpose. In this moment in time, men and women walk across a bridge that was the pinnacle of engineering for its time, proud of their civilization achievements and looking towards an even brighter future.
It makes you miss the good old days.
This article was last updated on April 16, 2021
