 |
| 0990 Brooklyn Bridge & Downtown Manhattan |
Posted on 26.01.2014, 21.02.2014, 28.01.2015, 25.04.2015, 25.05.2016, 21.08.2016
New York City is home to over 2,000 bridges and tunnels, some of which were premieres or set records. For example the Holland Tunnel was the world's first vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927, and the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, George Washington, and Verrazano-Narrows bridges were the world's longest suspension bridges when were opened in 1883, 1903, 1931, and 1964 respectively. The first bridge in New York, King's Bridge, was constructed in 1693, over Spuyten Duyvil Creek between Manhattan and the Bronx.
 |
| 0991 Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan |
Now the oldest crossing still standing is High Bridge, which connects Manhattan to the Bronx over the Harlem River. On the other hand, the George Washington, High Bridge, Hell Gate, Queensboro, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Macombs Dam, Carroll Street, University Heights and Washington bridges have all received landmark status. New York features bridges of all lengths and types, carrying everything from cars, trucks and subway trains to pedestrians and bicycles.
 |
| 1009 Brooklyn Bridge |
The George Washington Bridge, spanning the Hudson River between New York City and Fort Lee (New Jersey), is the world's busiest bridge in terms of vehicular traffic, but also, togheter with Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge, is considered among the most beautiful in the world. Others are more well known for their functional importance such as the Williamsburg Bridge, which has two heavy rail transit tracks, eight traffic lanes and a pedestrian sidewalk.
 |
| 0992 Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan |
The Brooklyn Bridge stretches 1.825m over the East River, connecting Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension, is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, and also the first steel-wire suspension bridge constructed. Designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, it was completed in 1883, and has become in a short time an icon of New York City. The architectural style is Neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the towers, built of limestone, granite blocks (quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine), and Rosendale cement.
 |
| 1422 Brooklyn Bridge silhouetted by a glittering downtown New York skyline at dusk |
.jpg)
Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Its paint scheme is "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver", although it has been argued that the original paint was "Rawlins Red". Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The bridge originally carried horse-drawn and rail traffic, with a separate elevated walkway along the centerline for pedestrians and bicycles. Since 1950, the main roadway has carried six lanes of automobile traffic.
 |
| 2701 Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan in 2013 |
A bronze plaque is attached to one of the bridge's anchorages, which was constructed on a piece of property occupied by a mansion, the Osgood House, at 1 Cherry Street in Manhattan. It served as the first Presidential Mansion, housing George Washington, his family, and household staff from April 23, 1789 to February 23, 1790, during the two-year period when New York City was the national capital. The centennial celebrations on May 24, 1983, saw a cavalcade of cars crossing the bridge, led by President Ronald Reagan. In 2006, a Cold War-era bunker was found by city workers in the Manhattan tower. The bunker, hidden within the masonry anchorage, still contained the emergency supplies that were being stored for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
 |
| 1540 Manhattan Bridge in black and white |
.jpg)
The Manhattan Bridge is the last of the three suspension bridges built across the lower East River (following the Brooklyn and the Williamsburg bridges), connecting Lower Manhattan (at Canal Street) with with Downtown Brooklyn (at the Flatbush Avenue Extension). The main span is 448 m long, with the suspension cables being 983 m long (its total length is 2,089 m). Nearly 80,000 vehicles and more than 320,000 people use it (via public transportation) each day.
 |
| 0993 Manhattan Bridge at twilight |
First bridge to be built based on deflection theory, a radical engineering theory at the time, and also the first suspension bridge to utilize a Warren truss in its design, it is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges and this design served as the model for many of the long-span suspension bridges built in the first half of the 20th century. It has four vehicle lanes on the upper level, split between two roadways. Four subway tracks are located on the lower deck of the bridge. The original pedestrian walkway on the south side of the bridge was reopened after forty years in June 2001.
 |
| 1423 Manhattan Bridge, looking up Berenice Abbott / gelatine silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
.jpg)
 |
| 0994 Verrazano-Narrows Bridge |
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge that connects the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn, marking the gateway to New York Harbor. It is named for both the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (the first European to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River), and for the body of water it spans: the Narrows. It has a central span of 1,298m, and was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its completion in 1964. Its massive towers can be seen throughout a good part of the New York metropolitan area, and all cruise ships and most container ships arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey must pass underneath it.
 |
| 0995 Queensboro Bridge & Midtown Manhattan (aerial view from the south) |
The Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge) is a double cantilever bridge over the East River, which connects the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens with the Upper East Side of Manhattan, passing over Roosevelt Island. The plans were finished in 1903 and construction soon began, but lasted until 1909 to be completed, due to delays from the collapse of an incomplete span during a windstorm and from labor unrest (including an attempt to dynamite one span).
 | ||
| 2575 Queensboro Bridge & Midtown Manhattan (aerial view from the north) |
The bridge doesn't have suspended spans, so the cantilever arm from each side reaches to the midpoint of the span. Until it was surpassed by the Quebec Bridge in 1917, the span between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island was the longest cantilever span in North America. In December 2010, the bridge was renamed Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge in honor of the former mayor Ed Koch, a decision unpopular among Queens residents and business leaders.
About the stamps
On three of the postcards (0990, 0991, and 0992) are stamps belonging to a limited edition of twenty Forever stamps, issued on November 19, 2013, to commemorate the Harry Potter film series. The stamps was edited in blocks of four (so five blocks), with a small stamp in the middle, showing the red wax seal of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The art directors for this series were William J. Gicker and Greg Breeding.
The first set shows Harry Potter and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (clockwise starting top left):
• Harry Potter - It's on the postcard 2620
• Harry Potter and Ron Weasley
• Hermione Granger - It's on the postcard 0991
• Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger - It's on the postcard 2263
The second set shows four of the amazing creatures that will one day come to Harry’s aid (clockwise starting top left):
• Harry Potter and Fawkes the Phoenix - It's on the postcard 2703
• Harry’s pet owl, Hedwig - It's on the postcard 0992
• Harry Potter and Buckbeak the Hippogriff - It's on the postcard 2378
• Dobby the House Elf - It's on the postcard 2703
• Headmaster Albus Dumbledore - It's on the postcard 0992
• Professor Severus Snape - It's on the postcard 1823
• Professor Minerva McGonagall - It's on the postcard 1399
• Rubeus Hagrid - It's on the postcard 1398
• Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ron Weasley
• Luna Lovegood - It's on the postcard 2226
• Ginny Weasley - It's on the postcard 0990
• Fred and George Weasley - It's on the postcard 2372
The fifth set shows the frightening villains encountered by Harry and his friends (clockwise starting top left):
• Draco Malfoy - It's on the postcard 0992
• Harry Potter with wand, during his final battle with Voldemort - It's on the postcard 2620
• Bellatreix Lestrange - It's on the postcard 2703
• Lord Voldemort - It's on the postcard 2205
On the postcards 0990, 0991, and 0994 are three stamps, depicting a Chippendale chair (4c), a silver coffeepot (3c), and a Navajo jewelry (2c), which are part of the definitives series American Design, about which I wrote here, and also a stamp of Wedding series, about which I wrote here. Two stamps of the series American Design are also on the postcard 2575. On the postcards 0993 and 1009 is a Global Forever First-Class Mail International stamp, about which I wrote here.
On the postcards 1422 and 1423 is a stamp featuring a portrait of George Washington, about which I wrote here. On the same postcards, and on the postcard 2701, are also stamps from the series Building a Nation, about which I wrote here.On the postcard 2701 are also astamp depicting the president Abraham Lincoln, I wrote here.
On the postcard 0994 are also a stamp belonging to a series featuring 10 images from vintage flower seed packets, about which I wrote here, and a stamp, depicting Spicebush Swallowtail, which is part of a definitive series with butterflies, about which I wrote here.
On the postcard 0995 is a very special stamp, the most famous error in the history of U.S. stamps, the Inverted Jenny, a 1918 misprint, reissued on September 22, 2013. Originally issued to commemorate the start of the first regular air mail service in the United States, the original Jenny stamp was designed to show a Curtiss JN-4H, or "Jenny," the biplane used to deliver the mail. Two eerie occurrences took place surrounding the nation’s first air mail flight that took place 1918. The pilot got lost, flew in the wrong direction, and crashed. And due to a printing error of the 24-cent Curtiss Jenny airmail stamp created to commemorate this historic event, the biplane was depicted flying upside down on one sheet of 100 stamps that was sold to the public. A block of four inverted Jennys was sold at a Robert A. Siegel auction in October 2005 for US $2.7 million.
The stamps on the postcard 1540 are part of the set A scene in Colorado, 150 million years ago, which is part of the series The World of Dinosaurs, about which I wrote here.
The last stamp on the postcard 2575, dedicated to Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), is part of the series Music Icons, about which I wrote here.
References
Bridges and tunnels in New York City - Wikipedia
Bridges - New York City D.O.T. official website
Top 5 Bridges in New York City - New York Habitat
Brooklyn Bridge - Wikipedia
Manhattan Bridge - Wikipedia
Queensboro Bridge - Wikipedia
Harry Potter - U.S. stamp gallery
Inverted Jenny - Wikipedia
Sender 0990: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 10.01.2014
Photo: Kamran Shaukat / 2006
Sender 0991: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 10.01.2014
Photo: Ralph Pugliese, Jr.
Sender 0992: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 10.01.2014 Photo: Ralph Pugliese, Jr.
Sender 0993: Denise
Sent from Jericho (New York / United States), on 04.01.2014
Sender 0994: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 29.01.2014
Sender 0995: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 11.12.2013
Photo: Ralph Pugliese, Jr.
Sender 1009: Denise
Sent from Jericho (New York / United States), on 04.01.2014
Sender 1422: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 25.03.2014
Photo: Alfred Mainzer
Sender 1423: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 21.02.2014
Photo: Berenice Abbott / gelatine silver print / 1936 / The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Sender 1540: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 26.03.2015
Sender 2575: Denise
Sent from Greenvale (New York / United States), on 29.03.2014
Sender 2701: Denise
Sent from Jericho (New York / United States), on 28.03.2014
Photo: Sergey Kelnik / 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment