Public Garden

This guide to the Public Garden's little footbridge starts with a boast: for decades it was billed as the world's shortest working suspension bridge, its iron eyebar chains looping from stone tower to stone tower since engineer Clemens Herschel and architect William Preston built it in 1867. Standing at the center rail with the Swan Boats gliding below, you'll hear why bridge historians and park engineers have quietly picked at that claim ever since, and what a 1936 plaque from the Boston Society of Civil Engineers still insists on. Look up at the original chains before you cross.