File:Bridge Street bridge, Seneca Falls, New York - 20230102.jpg

English: As seen in January 2023 from the rear parking lot of the Seneca Falls Community Center, this 176-foot steel Warren thru-truss bridge was built in 1915 and carries the aptly named Bridge Street over the Cayuga-Seneca Canal in Seneca Falls, New York. Though its status as a contributing element to the New York State Barge Canal system was what earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places, it's even more notable as the place where, in 1917, Antonio Varacalli, a teenaged immigrant laborer, jumped into the canal in pursuit of a local woman, Ruth Dunham, who had attempted suicide. Though the rescue was successful, Varacalli himself drowned in the process. A memorial plaque was installed on the bridge in 1921 after four years of fundraising among the community by the local Elks lodge, and the event is understood by film historians to have been the inspiration behind the pivotal scene in the 1946 movie It's a Wonderful Life in which the guardian angel Clarence jumps off a bridge to save a suicidal George Bailey: local barber Tom Bellissima, who cut Frank Capra's hair during a December 1945 visit by the latter to Seneca Falls, later recalled recounting the story in detail at the director's request, and accompanying him on a brief visit to the bridge.