You can’t see the whole thing, just some steel beams angling down to the roadway and two large chunks of concrete, suspended midair and obscured by a building.

Still, there’s no mistaking it. If you ran across Y.E. Soderberg’s watercolor on the other side of the world, you’d know in an instant you’re looking at a painting of the Mystic River Bridge.

That’s because it’s a genuine landmark, familiar to all in southeastern Connecticut.

As a yearlong observance of the bridge’s 100th anniversary winds down, there’s one more celebration to take in. The Mystic Museum of Art has an exhibition that tells the bridge’s story through works of art.

“100 years of the Mystic River and the Bascule Bridge” explores the importance of both waterway and crossing in forging the village’s identity.

Without the former, a tradition of shipbuilding wouldn’t have happened. Without the latter, parts of Groton and Stonington couldn’t have become a single place.

In the pre-bridge era, there were three ways to get from one town to the other, none of them convenient if you happened to be on what’s now West Main Street looking to get to East Main, a stone’s throw away. You could take a long detour via the head of the river in Old Mystic; cross “the narrows,” where Interstate 95 is now; or pay Joseph Packer for a ferry ride to the south.

The death of the not-so-reliable ferryman, who worked when he pleased, prompted a petition for a bridge. A privately owned wooden structure opened in 1819, and travelers paid 25 cents to cross. Packer’s Wharf became a backwater as neighboring businesses migrated to Main Street.

The bridge’s 1831 rebuild is the first to make an appearance in the exhibition. It’s portrayed not by a painter but a commercial photographer, Everett A. Scholfield, who had a long local career.

By the time Scholfield’s lens captured the bridge at the end of the Civil War, the two Mystics were becoming one, aided by the elimination of the toll. Groton and Stonington had bought out the owners and made the crossing free.

In 1866, the year after the photo was taken, the wooden bridge gave way to a sturdier one made of iron. It’s represented in a cheery oil on linen by Frederick Rickeman, an artist known for views of California.

Looking toward the Groton side from a high vantage point, the scene is recognizable by the curve of West Main Street and the distant spire of Union Baptist Church. From the bridge’s tower hangs a sign admonishing travelers to “walk your horses.” But two of those crossing, a stray dog and a farmer with a yoke of oxen, are apparently exempt.

The iron bridge was followed, in 1904, by an ill-fated attempt at progress. A steel swing bridge was built to carry a new trolley line over the river, but its foundations settled unevenly, and it frequently got stuck in the open position.

J. Eliot Enneking’s oil on linen gives a gauzy, impressionistic view of this bridge and reflections in the water.

The trolley bridge’s problems set the stage for what’s now being celebrated: a replacement that was built to last. Based on a patent by Thomas E. Brown, an elevator engineer who designed bascule bridges in his spare time, it was a first for Mystic, which had had nothing but swing bridges. The deck would rise instead of turn, seesawing with concrete counterweights. The result was a wider channel in the river.

In the first views of the bascule bridge, it was still just an idea. Three engineering drawings lay out its design in crisp, rivet-by-rivet detail. They were done in 1920 and are reproduced larger than actual size, the better to see a blizzard of minutiae: tiny numbers, dashed and crisscrossed lines, and notations like “air compressor” and “operating strut.”

One shows the bridge in profile, another details the counterweights, and the third features the “bull wheel” mechanism that runs the machinery. Created for practical reasons, they are also glorious works of art.

“Manual drafting was once a lovingly nurtured and prized skill that … fell into decline,” the exhibition notes, adding that it has recently enjoyed a resurgence.

The completed bascule bridge appears in paintings like H. Lee Hirsche’s 1950 watercolor, a straightforward portrait with the counterweights strangely red; and views like Y.E. Soderberg’s, which show it as a partly hidden piece of the downtown landscape.

In a 1940s watercolor by J. Olaf Olson, it’s even less visible. The focal point is a rower placidly making his way upriver, but a bit of the bridge in the distance is enough to locate the scene. A more prominent landmark is the Strand Theater, one of many buildings lost in a disastrous 1960 fire.

If the bridge had a moment of maximum exposure, it was probably Aug. 7, 1954, when it appeared on the cover of the New Yorker. Artist Garrett Price, who summered on Masons Island, supplied the magazine with a watercolor called “Raising the Drawbridge at Mystic, CT.” Four young people on a sailboat approach from the south, one blowing a horn, perhaps to signal the tender.

The cover is accompanied by Price’s initial sketch, and seeing them together is like playing spot-the-differences. Sharp-eyed observers will note that the sketch wasn’t done from life. The tender’s house is on the wrong side, the piers are drawn incorrectly, and the deck is capped by a truss that isn’t really there. The errors were fixed in the final version.

Curator Amelia Onorato said the exhibition was conceived independently of the anniversary efforts but meant to tie in with them. The initial idea was to feature just artwork showing the bascule bridge from the museum’s collection, augmented by outside contributions.

“The more we researched, though, the more interesting information and artworks we kept uncovering,” she said in an email.

In addition to paintings of earlier bridges, she said, the history of the river and Mystic shipbuilding fit into the story. For example, ships had to be designed to get through the narrow channel left by the open swing bridges.

The exhibition begins with a look at the river’s shipbuilding heritage. Though less than 5 miles long, it was home to 11 concerns that produced 1,400 vessels.

Two of them appear in a large, dramatic oil on linen called “Clipper Ships Rounding Cape Horn,” painted by Lars Thorsen around 1940. The vessels, their bowsprits aimed almost skyward in rough seas, are believed to be the Andrew Jackson and the David Crockett, famous clippers from Mystic yards.

Bringing the story full circle is a look at Mystic’s time as an art colony, which led to the creation of many of the paintings.

An accompanying exhibition called “Building Bridges” is a juried show in which contemporary artists interpret the idea of forging connections in their works. In addition to metaphorical bridges between people, some of the works offer lively new views of the bascule bridge.

They launch the landmark on its second century of inspiring artists as it continues to define a village.

j.ruddy@theday.com

IF YOU GO

What: 100 Years of the Mystic River and the Bascule Bridge

Where: Mystic Museum of Art, 9 Water St., Mystic

When: Through Dec. 17

Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily

Admission: Adults $10; museum members, military families, children under 12 free.

Information: mysticmuseumofart.org