August 14, 1911
Many of the individuals in the Cotton photographs remain unidentified. This photograph is one of them. The photograph was taken in a Pawtucket studio. The painted window offers a view of the Central Falls in the center of the community. The bridge and the falls had an symbolic status that the historian Paul Johnson described this way:
...the bridge hid the waterfall, it used the falls to call attention to itself and to the built landscapes that it joined together. Pawtucket owed its growth to the technological conquest of a waterfall. The layout of the village and the placement of the bridge completed that conquest visually and emotionally.
Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper, New York: Hill and Wang, 2003
Not surprisingly the view of the Main Street Bridge appeared on many postcards, including this one sent by Emma.