1910sPontoon Bridge
Men in Bowler Hats on the Pontoon Bridge Below Petrovaradin Fortress
A bridge of moored pontoons carries a timber roadway across the Danube and two men in bowler hats stand at its rail. An ink signature crosses the sky. The caption names the fortress three times over, in German, Serbian and Hungarian, which is how the town's printers addressed a card before 1918.
About this place
Before any permanent bridge stood here, Novi Sad and Petrovaradin were joined by a wooden pontoon bridge laid across the Danube on oak floats. Crossings of this kind were used from the late seventeenth century, and the first standing bridge dates from 1788; it was known as Hagen's bridge after the officer, Baron von Hagen, who designed it on the model of one at Mannheim. It was laid each spring by the pontonier unit stationed at Petrovaradin and taken up again before the first ice, and its middle section could be drawn aside to let river traffic through. Carts paid a toll while anything carried by hand went free, residents of the two towns crossed without charge, and the season opened every year with a handshake between the mayor of Novi Sad and the commandant of the fortress. The bridge was removed for the last time in 1918, when work began on the permanent crossing that became the Prince Tomislav bridge.
On the card
Festung Peterwardein / Grad Petrovaradin / Pétervárad vár
- Date
- 1910s
- Coordinates
- 45.25463, 19.85729
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 1620 × 1023 px
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