![Sydney Harbour Bridge design by Norman Selfe, c 1903](../../media/files/d8e2da8cfcbee90d2991113a066b4d15db61e09e_1456420457.jpg)
Sydney Harbour Bridge design by Norman Selfe, c 1903
Watercolour
ML 1401
Norman Selfe (1839 –1911) was an engineer, naval architect, inventor urban visionary and Sydney identity. Decades before the existing Harbour Bridge was built, Norman Selfe proposed a steel cantilever bridge across the harbour with its northern foot in McMahons Point. Never realised due to financial constraints the watercolour is a reminder of what might have been and that harbour crossings and imagining the future of the city has been a continuing obsession.