About This Stamp
Majestic, graceful, powerful—the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is a breathtaking sight visible from vantage points in all five of New York City's boroughs. The bridge celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2014, which the U.S. Postal Service® commemorates with this Priority Mail® stamp.
The digital illustration on the stamp captures the grandeur of the Verrazano, not only showing its sheer size and scale, but also giving a sense of the sweeping curve of the double-decker roadway. The artist chose to showcase the bridge at twilight, which offers an interesting play of light and shadow.
Named for explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European to enter New York Bay, the bridge spans the Narrows, the strait dividing Upper and Lower New York Bay, and connects Brooklyn and Staten Island. The bridge's two massive towers support four enormous cables that each weighs more than 9,000 tons. From each cable hang 262 suspender ropes that hold up the double-decker roadway. Each deck carries six lanes of traffic.
The bridge's center span is 4,260 feet long—so long that its two monumental towers, soaring 690 feet into the sky, are spaced one-and-five-eighths inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases to compensate for the curvature of the earth.
At time of the opening of the upper deck on November 21, 1964, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. (The lower deck opened five years later.)
Designed by art director Phil Jordan, the stamp features a digital illustration created by Dan Cosgrove.
Images of Verrazano-Narrows Bridge® New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Used with permission.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Dan Cosgrove
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Dan Cosgrove graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1978 with a major in graphic design. After briefly working for the National Park Service in Denver and as a designer at Cato Johnson in Cincinnati, Cosgrove moved to Chicago in 1980 and began a freelance career in digital and traditional illustration.
Cosgrove's designs have appeared in numerous ads, posters, covers, and on packaging. Recent clients include Cunard Line, Dunlop Tire, Fiat, J P Morgan Chase, Miller Brewing Company, Netflix, The New York Times, Shell Oil company, SohoPress, and The Wall Street Journal. In recognition of his work Cosgrove has received awards from Communications Arts and the Society of Illustrators (Gold Medal).
The 2008 Express Mail® and Priority Mail® stamps featuring Mount Rushmore and Hoover Dam were Cosgrove's first projects for the U.S. Postal Service. Since then, Cosgrove has illustrated 27 additional Express Mail and Priority Mail Express stamps. Recent designs include Florida Everglades (Priority Mail) (2023), Great Smoky Mountains (Priority Mail Express) (2023), Monument Valley (Priority Mail) (2022), and Palace of Fine Arts (Priority Mail Express) (2022). He also created the stamp art for USS Missouri (2019).
Cosgrove and his wife live in Clarendon Hills, Illinois.