Rooftops, Brooklyn
Fidelia Bridges American
"Rooftops, Brooklyn"—along with "Garden View, Brooklyn" (2021.161.1)—dates from Bridges’ residency in the home of merchant William August Brown and his family, for whom she had first worked as a governess, in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1860, the Browns made it financially possible for Bridges to study with William Trost Richards at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She returned in 1863 to Brooklyn, where the Browns provided her with a studio on the top floor of their brownstone at 93 1st Place, in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood. It was from a window in that studio that she rendered "Rooftops, Brooklyn," an evocative view of an early evening sky with varied domestic and commercial buildings at both close and distant range.
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