The Zurich filmmaker Martin Witz traces the life and work of the Swiss engineer Othmar H. Ammann in New York and comes across icons of classical modernism.
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The George Washington Bridge, opened in 1931, is Othmar H. Ammann’s first litter. (Image: PD)
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When a young ETH graduate from Schaffhausen named Othmar H. Ammann came to New York in 1904 to find a job and his happiness there, horses were still pulling the tram. But there is a spirit of optimism, and the Swiss engineer’s dreams are aiming high: he imagines connecting Manhattan and New Jersey by a bridge over the Hudson, with a span of one kilometer twice as long as any other. When he died sixty years later, he had long since made it – and moreover, he had just completed his late masterpiece. His works remain as monuments of classical modernism, which, like his life, is drawing to a close.
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