Bridge to Acceptance: Viewing New York’s Wounded Skyline

On the day of the catastrophe, it was an escape route for terrified thousands. Every day since, it has been a path for emergency vehicles to avoid gridlock on their way to the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.

Saturday the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the enduring symbols of New York, was serving yet another civic function: as a vantage point from which the curious and the heartsick could view a skyline devoid of the twin towers.

Tourists and artists and others once came to the bridge to marvel at the straight-ahead view of the two 110-story towers. Now they are coming to marvel at their absence.

“They say that seeing is believing. Well, not seeing is believing, too,” said Keith Cherry, a trucker, who was walking the 3,600-foot-long bridge with his nephew. “When you see they’re not there, you believe it really happened.”

Once blocked by the behemoth towers, the World Financial Center now dominates the view of Manhattan from the crest of the bridge. A huge American flag hangs from the Brooklyn-facing side of the building, in memory of the thousands who perished.

“I love this bridge,” said Sue Pashko, manager of a photo agency near the trade center. “It was so sad to see it that day with people running and holding on to their belongings.”

Pashko had walked over to Brooklyn--vehicle lanes in that direction were still for emergency vehicles only--and now was returning to Manhattan. “Thank God the bridge wasn’t attacked,” she said.

Rumors have raced through New York since terrorists crashed two hijacked planes into the trade center. One of the rumors--denied by officials--has held that the Brooklyn Bridge could be a target.

National Guard troops from a Brooklyn unit continue to guard the Brooklyn and Manhattan portions of the bridge. As fire and police boats ply the East River below the span, foot traffic is resuming.

On a normal pre-attack day, about 2,000 people walked the slat-boarded pedestrian promenade above the traffic lanes. Saturday, the number of pedestrians was much lower, but it was the most since Sept. 11.

“People are coming back to the bridge--they’ll never abandon it,” said New York police officer Cal Wong, stationed at the Manhattan entrance.

When it opened in 1883, the bridge, with its stone masonry towers--now topped by flags at half-staff--and its 3,500 miles of steel wire suspension cables, was hailed as an engineering landmark and a major step toward uniting the five boroughs into Greater New York.

Poet Hart Crane saluted its audacity and the “vibrant reprieve” it offered the work-weary. Some of that reprieve was evident Saturday.

Charmon Savage found something soothing about returning to the bridge to walk into Manhattan to get his paycheck. His son, Branden, 9, had collected grainy dust from the bridge rail, left from the dark clouds that billowed when the towers collapsed.

“I’ve been using this bridge all my life,” Savage said. “I’m not going to be scared away from it. I feel good being on it.”

So, too, did tourists and New Yorkers, some of each group wearing “God Bless America” and “Don’t Mess With America” T-shirts.