What Is The Bridge In The Background Of The Commercial

In Ads and Moving picture, a Bridge Escapes the Background

The Manhattan Bridge, above left, has long been in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, right, but of late it has been winning wider attention in popular culture.

Credit... Ángel Franco/The New York Times

July 19, 2013

Madison Avenue is trying to sell you a bridge. No, not that one.

In the iconography of New York, no bridge is more famous than the Brooklyn Bridge, but a largely disregarded stepsister structure over the East River has quietly been accumulating prestige. It may be difficult to believe, but the Manhattan Bridge has get hip.

"The span clearly has a new agent," the longtime advertisement executive Jerry Della Femina said.

The century-old, 6,855-pes-long, Federal Blue span appears in advertisements for Honda, Fiat and Kia automobiles, is emblazoned on a women's scarf designed by Izak Zenou for Henri Bendel, is featured in shoots for the clothier Massimo Dutti, dominates the main theatrical poster for the Tom Cruise film "Oblivion" and recently made the covers of several New York City guidebooks.

Its new cachet may take less to do with the civic subsequently which it is named than with Brooklyn and the emergence of the fashionable Dumbo neighborhood (the acronym for Down Under Manhattan Span Overpass), which has emerged from derelict warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront.

The bridge itself was celebrated as a gateway to Brooklyn — a tribute affirmed past the giant pillar and curvation at the Manhattan entrance (incongruously topped by a frieze of a buffalo hunt, designed by an creative person from Buffalo). The colonnade and arch are official New York City landmarks. The span itself, which connects Canal Street in Lower Manhattan with Flatbush Avenue Extension in Brooklyn, is not.

The Brooklyn Span was congenital beginning, followed by the Williamsburg. The cantilever Queensboro opened almost nine months before the Manhattan in 1909, which evolved from various designs. From the start, it swayed precipitously, because subway tracks were installed on the outer lanes.

It was originally known blandly equally Bridge No. 3 and was soon named for Manhattan, over the objections of the city'south bridge commissioner, who complained that Manhattan would not "signify annihilation" since "all of the bridges have their terminal in Manhattan."

For much of its history, the construction has been eclipsed by the Brooklyn Span. While the Manhattan figured in a number of films, many featured its devastation as a result of earthquakes and attacks involving aliens, superheroes, monsters and large apes.

At present the entreatment of the Manhattan Bridge is growing, perhaps because the Brooklyn Bridge is partly shrouded by a cover equally it undergoes some work.

"The Manhattan Bridge, an ugly duckling and probably the most poorly engineered large bridge in the metropolis, has been replacing the lovely and venerable Brooklyn Span every bit New York City's almost iconic span in popular culture," Michael Miscione, the Manhattan borough historian, said.

"The hippest car, fashion and liquor ads and picture show posters all feature the Manhattan Bridge — something unthinkable 10 or xv years ago, earlier the trendsetters settled in Dense in force," Mr. Miscione said. "I began to take notice of this tendency nigh five or six years ago, and the miracle has only picked up steam since and then."

The span has reaped the rewards from Dense'south transformation from a "no human's land" to "the chicest spot in Brooklyn," said Mr. Zenou, the way designer, who lives in Lower Manhattan. He said the bridge was allegorical of Dense and other neighborhoods "where all immature hipster New Yorkers motility."

Paradigm

Credit... Massimo Dutti

"It brings a very industrial feel," he added, "a kind of strength and oversized dimension." The silk scarf inspired by the bridge, which sells for $129, was designed, Mr. Zenou said, "to bring that feeling of a downtown kind of daughter, as opposed to the Upper East or Upper W Side princess."

A spokeswoman for the Massimo Dutti team that photographed an ad from the Brooklyn side of the bridge said: "We were aiming to create a New York City universe through ane of its almost iconic landmarks."

The Honda commercial, said Carlos Figueiredo, executive artistic director at Publicis Kaplan Thaler, an ad bureau, was role of the "Street Smart" campaign for the Tri Honda Dealer Advertising Association, a group of dealers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. In an advert titled "Awe," the views are from Brooklyn and reflect, he said, "an accurate properties for those who live and drive here."

"We made a conscious conclusion to include the actual cobblestones, bridges and suburban streets locals travel on, and the places they go," he said.

Arabella Bowen, executive editorial director of Fodor's, the travel guides, one of which features the Manhattan Span on the embrace, said that with the opening of the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn last summertime and the " proliferation of some of the all-time eats in the metropolis, nosotros've fabricated a big button this year toward putting Brooklyn on travelers' radars."

In the film "Oblivion," which was released this year with the tagline "Earth Is a Memory Worth Fighting For," Mr. Cruise is pictured on an off-kilter version of the bridge, its break cables dangling.

Joseph Kosinksi, who directed the picture show, said he was impressed with the open up, X-shape lattice steel work, fifty-fifty if the span might not exist immediately recognizable. "There'due south a familiarity and clearly it's from the 20th century," he said, "but I don't know if people recognize it off the bat equally New York."

James Sanders, who in his book "Celluloid Skyline" explored the use of New York locales in popular culture, said he had once suggested that the Chrysler Edifice receive an award for All-time Supporting Skyscraper.

"The Manhattan Bridge is somewhat like that," he said, "ever seen discreetly in the background in all those swooping helicopter shots of the Brooklyn Bridge, similar a secondary performer existence careful not to upstage the star. It'due south not a terrible-looking bridge in itself — and of course with its 1,500-foot cardinal suspension span information technology is an immensely impressive engineering structure in its ain right — but has always been overshadowed, almost literally, past its far more famous, more than historic, and more poetically designed neighbor."

The Manhattan Span seems to be achieving its moment, Mr. Sanders said, "benefiting from the moving-picture show and fashion world's constant demand for novelty."

With the Brooklyn Bridge potentially suffering from overexposure, "at this point we're looking for other symbols of the urban center," Mr. Kosinski said, adding that maybe next "we turn to the Queensboro." Where that demand volition terminate is anybody'south estimate. "The truly ugly Williamsburg Bridge side by side?" Mr. Miscione asked in mock horror.

Luckily, Mr. Sanders said, "New York has a dozen or more than neat bridges up its sleeve when filmmakers and art directors eventually get bored with the Manhattan Bridge, though by the time they get to the Outerbridge Crossing we might want to call it a day."