This Mysterious Long-Lost Film of the Brooklyn Bridge Wasn’t Seen for a Century

When the Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24, 1883, its towers were the tallest structure in the country, and it was considered an engineering marvel of the kind that few Americans outside the big city would have seen in person.

But those Americans, around the turn of the century, might have seen it in a movie, like the short film above. Perhaps they saw the film when W. Frank Brinton, an early-20th-century traveling moving-picture exhibitor, came through their towns.