And yet, improbably, that particular view from Brooklyn still feels like an artwork when you encounter it in person. When you turn from Water Street onto Washington Street and the bridge suddenly rises up, it’s an arresting, pulse-quickening sight, like the scene in sci-fi movies where you first glimpse a little — just a little — of the huge monster or alien as it scuttles between buildings. You can even see the Empire State Building across the East River, small as a souvenir, between the bridge’s pillars. In another context that might be the whole show. But because of the scale of the vision before you here, it’s just a grace note.

The view of Manhattan has made Dumbo a tourist destination in recent years. But back when the neighborhood was in its infancy, it was sufficiently sketchy that Instagrammers, had they existed, would have stayed in their beach chairs taking pictures of their feet . Doreen Gallo, who paints and makes mosaic installations, and who serves as the director of the Dumbo Neighborhood Alliance, remembers getting a visit from a prominent art dealer early on. “In 1984, Holly Solomon came to my studio,” she said. “She paid the cabdriver $50 to keep the cab running and told him she’d give him another $50 if he was still there when she came out. That’s how people were about Dumbo.”

The story goes that the acronym D umbo, for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, was dreamed up in 1978 by artists who hoped a weird name would keep developers at bay. According to Crane Davis, who brainstormed the moniker over beers with the other members of the “naming committee ,” the second choice was D anya, for District Around the Navy Yard Annex. D umbo won, apparently, because it was dumber.