Early 1900s Brooklyn Bridge film shown after many years
Eagle file photo by Lore Croghan
An early film of the Brooklyn Bridge, taken from one of the elevated railroad cars that traversed the bridge in its early days, is now available to the public after being discovered in a farmhouse and restored. The film was taken by W. Frank Britton, an early 20th-century motion picture photographer who went around the country taking and exhibiting films, according to Time. Britton retired to Iowa in 1908 and died in 1919. In 1981, the films were discovered by Michael Zahs, a local history teacher, Time reported.
In 2014, Zahs donated the collection to the University of Iowa, which worked with the company Media Preserve to catalogue and preserve the collection. Of the Brooklyn Bridge film, Zahs says, “Apparently this copy is the only one. Almost all cellulose nitrate film [an early method of processing film] has self-destructed in the last 100 years. It’s kind of a film miracle.” A documentary on the entire collection, “Saving Brinton,” opened in New York on Friday.
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