Rocky River Bridge (before 1920): Art, History and Details

Rocky River Bridge (before 1920) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Orville Houghton Peets (American, 1884–1968).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A bridge spanning the Rocky River to the west of Cleveland was built and rebuilt many times since its original construction in 1819. This image depicts the 1910 bridge, which was the longest stretch of unreinforced concrete in the world at the time. The area was a popular boating spot: Peets depicted a boatyard with “Launches for Sale” below the bridge. The small rowboats of Rocky River differ significantly from the images that Peets and other Cleveland artists made of the Cuyahoga, which often featured large steamboats and barges.

Object facts

• Title: Rocky River Bridge
• Date: before 1920
• Creator attribution: Orville Houghton Peets (American, 1884–1968)
• Culture: America, Ohio, Cleveland
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching
• Dimensions: Plate: 28.1 x 22.7 cm (11 1/16 x 8 15/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1920.1301

A detail from the museum

A painting by Peets featuring the Cuyahoga River was hung in the Salon des Artistes Français of 1913.

Collection credit

Gift of George W. Bierce

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 8, no. 2 (1921): 36-37.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.