A covered bridge and the George Washington Bridge in one frame, a century of American engineering from timber to steel.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Catalog Number: Scott #1012

• Denomination: 3 cents (3¢)

• Date of Issue: September 6, 1952

• Printing Method: Rotary Press, Engraved (Intaglio)

• Perforation: 11 × 10½

• Color: Violet Blue

• Subject: An early covered bridge and the George Washington Bridge, with the emblem of the American Society of Civil Engineers

• Format: Commemorative single

CONDITION ANALYSIS (Seller-Assessed)

• Status: Used

• Grading: Fine

• Postmark: Brown-toned machine postmark with partial slogan wording across the lower design. The bridges, the engineering emblem, and inscription remain clearly readable.

• Obverse: The covered bridge with a horse and buggy, the George Washington Bridge, the city skyline, and the American Society of Civil Engineers shield are all sharp and identifiable.

• Reverse: No original gum present, as expected for a used stamp. The paper shows light toning, with no tears or thinning visible.

• Centering / Margins: The design is well framed, with clear margins present on all four sides.

• Perforations: Intact on all four sides.

HISTORY

This stamp marks the centennial of the American Society of Civil Engineers, founded in 1852, and it tells a hundred years of progress in a single picture. On the left sits an old wooden covered bridge with a horse and buggy crossing it, the kind of modest structure that carried nineteenth-century America over its rivers. On the right rises the George Washington Bridge, the great steel suspension span across the Hudson completed in 1931, with the New York City skyline behind it. Between them, an era of transformation.

The design is a deliberate argument about what engineering does. In the span of one professional society's lifetime, the country went from timber trusses to soaring steel cables, from local crossings to structures that reshaped whole cities. The shield of the American Society of Civil Engineers, "Founded 1852," anchors the scene and credits the profession that made the leap possible.

Issued September 6, 1952, in violet blue, the stamp honored not a single person but a whole discipline, the surveyors, designers, and builders whose work most people use every day without a second thought. It celebrates the quiet achievement of infrastructure, the bridges and roads that hold ordinary life together.

STEVEN SAYS

The design does a lot of work in a small space. Old covered bridge with a horse and buggy on one side, the George Washington Bridge in steel on the other. A hundred years of engineering in one picture. It honors the whole profession, the people who build the bridges you drive over and never think about.