In the spring of 1924, Hart Crane met the love of his life, Emil Opffer, and moved into 110 Columbia Heights, the brownstone where Opffer lived with his father and brothers in Brooklyn Heights. There he lived in the "shadow" of the Brooklyn Bridge (as he wrote to his friend Waldo Frank), the inspiration behind the long poem he would eventually write called The Bridge, his grand hymn celebrating the history and future of America and the possibility of ecstatic connection—which to him the Brooklyn Bridge symbolized. He wrote to Frank:

so much more than my frustrations and multitude of humiliations has been answered in this reality and promise that I feel that whatever event the future holds is justified beforehand. And I have been able to give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with another.

We celebrate Hart Crane and his vision of America and ideal poetic community, the inspiration behind our own , with #24 to commemorate the year he moved to Brooklyn and began elaborating plans for The Bridge.