Chapter IV: Looking West on Brooklyn Bridge

One of the “Views of New York” most often pictured and most often snapped by amateur photographers is that of lower Manhattan as seen from a distance. And yet from a painting, photograph or drawing, who can feel what it is? As with pictures of the Grand Cañon, it seems impossible to realize the scale or to give the sense of its enormous size. To know what it is, one must have seen it. A picture, in this case, can only serve to refresh the memory of the man who knows.