A Painter’s Brush With the Bridges of New York

By Tina Kelley

“N.Y. Tramway II” (Antonio Masi, 2008) Enlarge this image.

New York, a city of five boroughs spread across four land masses, would be a giant clump of Bayonnes were it not for the 2,027 bridges linking the pieces together.

And for eight years, Antonio Masi has painted these bridges, or at least the major ones. Not with a foot-wide brush, gray paint and a safety harness, but with watercolors.

His favorite is the 59th Street Bridge, because his maternal grandfather, a man he never met, had hauled steel girders to build it. Mr. Masi’s family settled on the Upper East Side, not far from the bridge, also known as the Queensboro.