Crossing The Delaware

TRENTON MAKES THE WORLD TAKES means so many things. It's a TRADEMARK. It's a SHAKEDOWN. The phrase changed along with the city, and it still resonates. But it strikes a different tone than it did a century ago. Inside the phrase spells TOWN and ROAD, OWNER, WATER, STONE, STEEL, HOME, HOMELESS, HAND, and HEAD.

The first steel letters were welded onto the Lower Trenton Bridge one hundred years ago. The letters were smaller then, and had serifs. HORSE. SOOT. SMOKE. Trenton's main industry was making Bridges – not small, narrow, town bridges like the Lower Trenton – but the largest, most impressive bridges ever built. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, The George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano, and the Golden Gate were all built with parts and cables made in Trenton. These suspension bridges were last century's most powerful symbols of American architecture, ingenuity, and infrastructure. HERALD. LANDMARK. STATEMENT. WEALTH. At some point, all the bridges were built, and there were no more rivers to cross. In 1974, the Roebling Steel Wire plant that made bridge parts closed permanently. END. OMEN. 

The letters, however, were refurbished in 1984 and are now ten feet tall and lit up in red neon at night. TRENTON MAKES THE WORLD TAKES is meant to be seen from afar, from the bypass and the North East Corridor rail line. The sign has been a curiosity for generations of people traveling to and from New York City. 

From the Lower Trenton Bridge, where the letters are hung, the landscape of the Delaware River unwinds from behind the text. The slogan is read in reverse, and the letters are embedded among the riveted steel girders and beams of the bridge. The Lower Trenton Bridge is barely two lanes wide. Traffic is slowgoing. Birds flock on its pilings. They build their NESTS in the crooks of the Ns. There is a WREN in W. They fly underneath the bridge and swoop close to the surface of the river. It feels wonderful to walk on a bridge over birds in flight. LARK. TERN. HAWK. 

During lunch hour people exercise in groups on the Lower Trenton Bridge. WALKERS. They step aside for the people pushing carts on their way to go shopping in Pennsylvania. Taxes are cheaper on everything there. Especially Cigarettes. T, A, (no x) E, S. Someone walks by, talking on a phone. She says "DON'T KNOW. WON'T KNOW." Behind her is the letter "O," and beyond, a New Jersey Transit train full of passengers rushes north. 

It's hard to describe the smell of the river, the sound of cars, the aspirations of walkers, the traffic, and the city reckoning with the world's grip on it without all the vowels and consonants. It is like trying to hear the sound of a voice through a ouija board. Photographs are even more mute. Crossing the Delaware is an effort to RETOOL and REMARK, REWORK our epitaphs into TOMES. 

– JW

Using Format