Synopsis
As Karen M. Goering once wrote, "During its near hundred-year reign as St. Louis' chief symbol - and more recently as the city's most visible connection with its rich past - the Eads Bridge has inspired an outpouring of creative work from artists, illustrators and photographers." Originally published in 1979, The Eads Bridge, by Quinta Scott and Howard S. Miller, is a powerful example of the bridge's hold on St. Louis's civic and artistic imagination. Scott's photographic essay explores the Eads Bridge as art and architecture in a series of beautiful renderings of its confident lines, spidery supports, gracefully bulky details, and unexpected interior spaces. The historical appraisal of the bridge by historian Howard S. Miller is as much the story of the personalities of the Mississippi River and James Eads as of the bridge itself. Miller's essay presents the bridge as an avenue to Gilded Age corruption, railroad monopolies, and robber barons and into the mind of Eads himself, a complex and forceful personality in his own right.
Eads's tenacity - and his "sustaining faith that glorified natural phenomena as it celebrated man's ability to comprehend and control them" - propelled the bridge he designed into virgin lands of metallurgy and engineering. Technically specific yet clearly explained, Miller's description of the construction process is fascinating reading that presents a refreshingly in-depth perspective on the landmark St. Louisans know so well.
