April, 1973
By ALLAN KELLER
 
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"The Great East River Suspenston Bridge" (Brooklyn Bridge) from an 1885 Currier & Ives lithograph. (Courtesy Kenneth M. Newman, Old Print Shop, New York City) There are other older, higher, longer and more unusual spans in the world but none created the excitement during construction or weathered the passing of nearly a century with anything like the fame of the Brooklyn Bridge. It carried its first passengers across the East River in carriages and on foot but later served for rapid-transit trains bearing thousands. It has been "sold" by confidence men to untold scores of gullible buyers. Scorned at the outset, it was later glorified by men like Walt Whitman, Lewis Mumford, and Hart Crane. It was the cause of the designer's, death and the builder's permanent paralysis but it still stands as a functIorung, viable monument to American vigor and brave men's dreams. Politically, it tied Brooklyn's millions to Manhattan's and made New York the nation's greatest metropolis. Economically, it made possible the development of Long Island into the fastest-growing suburban area in the country. Esthetically, it is a link in the chain of man's achievements that ranks with thePyramids, the Pont du Gard, the Alpine tunnels, the Empire State Building, and such modern spans as the Golden Gate and Verrazano bridges. The men who develop film for Kodak have seen it more often than any other one subject. |
 John A. Roebling (Harper's Magazine,1881)  Washington A. Roebling (Smithsonian Institution) |
Its genesis is shrouded in rumor, but it is known that John Roebling, the immigrant German engineer who designed it, was stranded on an East River ferry for hours one day by an ice pack built up during the 1852 winter freeze. He was then building a span across the Niagara gorge but his discomfiture in the ice jam was never forgotten. A bridge would have to be built there some day, he told himself. Roebling went on to erect the Niagara railroad bridge and another across the Ohio at Cincinnati. His son, Washington, who shared his profession and his dreams, was interrupted in his work by the Civil War, but rejoined his father in time to share in the labor and worry of constructing the Brooklyn span. The elder Roebling submitted his drawings and specifications to the New York Bridge Company in 1865, the year the war ended. After months of pulling and hauling, the politicians and financiers won legis- lative approval and the immigrant builder was named chief engineer at $8,000 a year. Roebling proposed that steel wire, rather than the usual iron, be used; that the span be built as close to City Hall park as possible and that the structure be not only safe beyond all doubt but esthetically satis- fying. Although the figure seems unrealistic in view of today's inflated prices, he estimated the bridge could be built for $7 million. By 1869 everything had been approved. Then fate intervened for the first time. It would not be the last. |
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Standing on a cluster of piles at the outboard end of the Fulton Street ferry slip, John Roebling was measuring to determine precisely where the Brooklyn tower should stand. He forgot about the ferry. A boat slid into the slip, nudging the piles against the fender rack. The engineer's foot was caught and crushed. Two weeks later he was dead of gangrene from blood poisoning. Down in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was manag- ing the family's wire-rope manufacturing firm, Colonel Washington Roebling knew what his father would want. At 32 he took over as chief engineer. Using the newly devised caisson to reach bedrock, the workers plunged into the work of building the towers. It was maddeningly slow, with progress some- times limited to six inches a week because of the cement-like bottom hardpan. Young Roebling con. ceived the idea of blasting inside the compressed air chamber, something never before tried. First he fired several revolver shots to test his theory, then tried small explosive charges. Nothing dangerous occurred, so he went on to heavy charges.  Elevation of bridge, showing temporary ropes used in cable-making. (Harper's Magazine: May 1881) One of his engineers said the scene in the caisson was straight out of Dante's Inferno, with half naked men moving in the dim light, the noise of hammers and drills shattering the eardrums and smoke from powder charges adding to the Stygian gloom. When Roebling switched to smokeless powder, just invented by Alfred Nobel, the work went faster. But not always smoothly. Once the caisson "blew out," again the timber roof caught fire and smoldered for weeks, and once the men managed to shut a hatch against the waters of the river just in time, but finally the Brooklyn tower rested firmly on bedrock 44-1/2 feet below the surface. The New York tower presented more hazardous prospects. Bedrock was found seventy-eight feet down, almost twice as deep as at the other side of the river . The caisson would have to operate with a pressure of thirty-five pounds per square inch and this meant that air compression illness, commonly called "the bends," would be a ,constant enemy. And there was quicksand under the silt! Soon workmen were seized by the horrible cramps of caisson illness. On April 12, 1872 the first worker died. The number of stricken rose until a hundred or more were unable to work. Two more sandhogs died. Then on a summer day that year they carried 35-year-old Colonel Roebling out of the caisson, paralyzed for life. There was talk of a new chief engineer but the younger Roebling refused to quit. Taking an apartment in Brooklyn overlooking the rising towers, the engineer watched progress through field glasses. His wife, Emily, when not busy nursing her husband, learned mathematics and engineering so that she was able to understand his orders, transcribe notes, and give them to junior engineers to execute. Another great engineer, David Steinman, wrote years later that Washington Roebling was like a wounded general still directing a battle from a hilltop command post through a devoted chief of staff. It required three more years to finish the huge piles of masonry that were the bridge towers. Then anchorage blocks were imbedded in the ground to hold the ends of the four cables. Next came the problem of spinning the cables. Obviously, a wire cable large enough to help sup- port a bridge with its great weight plus the burden of the vehicles on it could not be lifted to the tower tops or strung across a river. It had to be fashioned, small wire by small wire, until it reached the desired strength. This means that first there must be what were called traveler ropes suspended over the river to hold flimsy platforms on which men could work bonding the wires into a cable.  Cross-section of bridge, showing the foot, rail, and carriage ways. ("Harper's Magazine:' May 1881) In the summer of 1876 a great reel of rope was anchored at the Brooklyn end, then rolled on a reel placed on a scow. The scow was towed to the Man- hattan side, paying out rope as it went. The traveler rope sank to the river bottom, out of the way of ships and boats. Then a hoisting engine lifted the rope over the New York tower, taking up the slack until the rope emerged from the water and was pulled high in the air above the cross. Other ropes followed, but not before E. F. Farrington, chief carpenter, rode across the single strand in a boatswain's chair while thou- sands of spectators held their breath, wept or cheered. Whistles blew, bells rang, ferry boats stopped in midstream to give passengers a better view, and when Farrington touched down on the Manhattan side he was mobbed by the hysterical crowds. He had been the first across the Niagara gorge and across the Ohio. Now he was a hero in an age that could not yet dream of a John Glenn or a Neil Armstrong.  The Brooklyn pier under construction as the 39th course of masonry was completed September 21, 1872. (Museum of the City of New York) Catwalks were built under the traveler ropes and the work 0Ł spinning the cables began. One by one, wires were drawn from the Brooklyn end on a travel. ing wheel, up the eastern tower, sinking in a graceful curve over the river, over the Manhattan tower and down to the anchorage on that side. Each wire was continuous from end to end. From the ground or from a boat on the water, the four cables from which the bridge is suspended appear only as large black lines against the sky. But each one is made to bear an incredible load. The workmen fed the wires, one by one, across the river until they had nearly 300. Then these were tied together, without twisting, into a single strand. Each wire was gal- vanized (coated with zinc) to fight the corrosion of salt air from the ocean. Each strand was also protected. Finally nineteen strands were tied together to fash- ion one finished cable. In other words, each of the four main cables consists of about 5,700 individual steel wires. Two years after the cable spinning began the city and nation were rocked by the exposure of fraud on the part of J. Lloyd Haigh, the wire contractor. Haigh had underbid the Roebling wire-rope company even though the chief engineer had sold his interests in the family firm so it could bid on the contract. Inspectors discovered that Haigh was taking rejected wire away from the bridge building yard, putting it in a ware- house nearby, and then carting it out again with other wire that had passed inspection. Roebling de- cided not to discard the ones already woven into strands but to force the contractor to add other wire to bring strands up to specified strength. This furor was still white hot when a strand being fastened at the N ew York anchorage broke lose carrying its cast iron shoe and other attachments with it, and whipped up in a 900-foot arc before falling across housetops and buildings to land in the con- struction yard at the river's edge. This was not all. The energy created when part of the strand fell into the river acted like a man cracking a bullwhip and sent the strand skyward again. This time it snaked up over the tower and plunged into the water, narrowly missing a ferryboat. Two men were killed and three injured in this bizarre accident. Others died in less dramatic mishaps. Hammers and sledges Łell Łrom work platŁorms and killed men below. High winds blew others off catwalks, and hoists broke, letting huge chunks 0Ł granite masonry Łall to the ground. Colonel Roebling saw some of these tragedies through his binoculars. Others he learned about in the daily reports, but with unswerving determination, he ordered the work carried on with added saŁety precautions. He was less able to cope with financial difficulties growing out of politics and rising costs. Well before the span was ready for its roadway, expenses were running far beyond the original calculations. Promoters raised the cost of land acquisition. Subcontractors kited their bills and it became evident that the bridge would ultimately cost closer to $13 million. Public outcry forced the bridge company out of the picture. The firm was liquidated and the two cities of Brooklyn and New York assumed fiscal responsibility for completion. In the midst of this change of control someone quarreled with the Roebling theory of extra strength. This concept had led to the placement of extra heavy steel trusses so that locomotives and heavy steel cars could eventually use the bridge. New York newspapers seized upon this aspect of the construction as an excuse to excoriate the crippled engineer in articles and editorials. |
 Wrapping the cables. (From Harper's Magazine: May 1883) |
To Colonel Roebling such criticism was maddening. He knew that added strength would mean the span could carry the heavier loads which he foresaw would inevitably come in the future. He supported his father's design, which was based on an extra margin of safety. An example of this was the placing of wire stays radiating downwards from tower tops to bridge floor. Most bridges then, and many built long after, rely only on their cables which support the bridge; they use smaller cables suspended vertically from the four supporting strands. Roebling, the elder, wanted this method fortified by another . |
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He ran strong steel stays from each tower, like spokes of a wheel. Each stay was the hypotenuse of a triangle formed by the stay, the tower and the bridge floor structure. He saw them not only as an added measure of strength and rigidity-he said they could support the bridge even if the cables failed-but also as an esthetic addition to the beauty of the structure. To guard against the forces of possible gales and hurricanes, Roebling's design also called for steel trusses to keep the bridge from buckling. It was the cost of these portions that angered curbstone superintendents. The New York Times criticized the "stupidity" of the designer for using so much steel and, without benefit of any scientific evidence to support its case, asserted that the extra weight would cause the whole span to collapse. A prominent engineering magazine refuted the paper's accusation but its voice was unheard and unheeded in the storm of criticism. The public outcry did not abate. The crippled Roebling submitted a scientific defense showing that the cables would support four times the anticipated total dead and live weight. Still the howling and dire warnings persisted. A board of inquiry met in his room and questioned him. He insisted that things were going well, except for slow deliveries of steel, but to please angry critics the board removed him as chief engineer, giving the title to another and leaving him with the consolation title of consulting engineer.  The pier on the Brooklyn side - A general view of the foundation, looking across the East River. (Harper's Weekly: December 17, 1870) The new chief engineer had been the colonel's first deputy so work actually went on strictly as the Roe- blings, father and son, had planned it. Perhaps the switch was a minor kindness as it gave the builder time to write a full defense of his father's design for delivery before the American Society of Civil Engineers. This body was an august, serious group of men, most of them elderly and conservative, but they were fair-minded. They even broke with the ancient tradi- tion of their all-male society and permitted Emily Roebling to read the document her husband had pre- pared. It may have helped that she was an impassioned advocate for her husband's cause or it may just have been that what he said was obviously true and believable. Anyway, the society gave Roebling its wholehearted support and the public soon followed in its wake. Throughout the erection period the public was enamored of the bridge and its high promise. It watched the caissons being sunk, the masonry towers going up, and the spinning of the cables with a devotion verging on frenzy. Engineers quibbled over technical matters and archi- tects quarreled over the design of the towers, but the general public saw the bridge as the greatest achievement of the post-Civil War era! a proof that the United States was on the way to greatness and that reliance on Europe was no longer necessary.  The Brooklyn Bridge under construction. Note visitors on the catwalk, and the warning against cadenced movement on the walk (Coutersy of The New York Historical Society) That the arches of the two towers through which the roadways ran were, in fact, inspired by the majesty of ancient Gothic cathedrals mattered little to the man in the street, but the fact that Brooklyn and New York, long separated by the river, would now be only minutes away from each other, was both exciting and satisfying. |
 Master-mechanic E. F. Farrington makes the first crossing of the span on Friday afternoon, August 25,1876. (Harper's Magazine: May 1883)  Buildings being demolished to clear way for the long bridge approach on the Brooklyn side. ("Harper's Weekly") |
Meanwhile the prisoner of the Columbia Heights apartment saw the approaching completion with a feeling of immense relief. He had suffered great physical pain from the "bends," but the emotional pain caused by ignorant criticism, fraudulent contractors, the virulent opposition of the press, and interference by trustees with neither ability nor vision, hurt him far more. He entered the conflict as a private, built two small bridges in Virginia for the Union Army, and served ably as an observer in a captive balloon seeking signs of enemy-movements. He helped to discover that Lee was moving toward Pennsylvania in late June 1863 and, at the Battle of Gettysburg, was among the first to spot Hood's advance against Little Round Top. He raced to collect several passing regiments in time to thwart the Confederate flanking movement and even helped wheel a field piece into position to repel the attack. He left the army a colonel, having risen through the ranks by sheer ability. Like other great men, he was annoyed the most by the carping of petty officials and know-nothing politicians. He loved and admired his father, but he didn't want his own career to be lost in the older man's shadow. He often said that the design of the bridge as a monument and symbol was his father's contribution, but that he had to finish and improve the plans which his father had roughed out. These he had to transfer to steel and stone so that the dream could become a reality. |
 Construction proceeds on the Brooklyn Bridge, 1881. This view of the bridge near completion is toward New York. (Musuem of the City of New York) |
 Working on the cables. Most of these workmen were former saliors, accustomed to such dizzy heights. ("Harper's Weekly") |
A fortnight or so before the formal opening of the span in May of 1883 he revealed his feelings in a letter including these words: "For years I have been obliged to possess my soul with all the patience and philosophy that I could muster, and when I have had to yield to the inevitable I have consoled myself by thinking with Pope, 'Whatever is, is right, etc.' " One marvels at the harmonious relationship between John Augustus Roebling and Washington Roebling. The father envisioned the need for a bridge over the East River and designed a structure which time has proved is correct, safe, and enduringly bene- ficial to the community. When he died his son was ready to go forward with his plans, which were altered but little. They were two individuals but their minds worked as if governed by a common impulse. |
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The father had three great bridges to his credit and his son but one, yet the latter had no feeling of in- feriority. He had made a magnificent name for himself in the war just over and never doubted his own ability. So, putting up with adversity, wracked with physical and mental pain, he stayed on the job, watching every- thing with his binoculars or an occasional telescope, until the last bolt was tightened and the last steel plate in position. With Emily at his side, he knew he had prevailed over fate and his enemies. A newspaper had charged that the span was "one of the seven fraudulent wonders of the New World; con- ceived in iniquity and begun in fraud, it has been continued in corruption." Roebling knew he per- sonally was not involved and that the bridge itself was the best answer to critics. On May 24, 1883 Governor Grover Cleveland rode to meet President Chester A. Arthur at the latter's hotel, and the two drove down Broadway to City Hall between lines of cheering New Yorkers. The Seventh Regiment, pride of the city, and the United States Marines formed a military guard as the procession, now grown to thousands, marched east to the span and across it to a bunting-draped platform on the far side of the river. Cannon fired from Governors Island to the Brooklyn N avy Yard and there were speeches and martial music. With Emily beaming with joy at the window, Washington Roebling followed the events as best he could through his field glasses.  "Opening of the Great Suspension Bridge between New York and Brooklyn" (Bettman Archives) Similar carping and scolding had marked the long years of bridge construction, but now, with completion, the chorus changed to one of praise. The bridge, the erstwhile critics said, would tie the Atlantic to the Pacific; it would give impetus to the greatest economic advances in history and it would reunite a people lately torn by civil war. It was a giant harp upon which the wind played ethereal music. Such panegyrics were grandiose to the point of nonsense but the man in the street was stirred as he had seldom been before. A week later, on Memorial Day, as thousands strolled upon the bridge promenade high above the East River, a sudden gust of wind or some other natural and trifling event frightened one 0Ł the strollers. "The bridge is fallingl" he shouted and other took up the cry. Almost instantly panic seized the crowd; people rushed toward the approaches, stairways caused human log-jams, and beŁore police could restore order twelve persons had been trampled to death and scores injured. Beneath the affection most persons held for the span there still lurked a dark fear that the Roeblings had affronted God and nature by building this thorough-fare through the air. Almost ninety years have passed since that sad Memorial Day. Men have leaped to their death from the roadway. Others have been drawn compulsively to crawl into the spiderweb of cables from which other men have risked their lives to rescue them. Trolley cars were replaced by elevated and subway trains; carriages, hacks, and drays gave way to automobiles and trucks. Winter ice storms, heavy snows and tropical gales have only served to prove the soundness with which the Roeblings engineered the span. A few years ago, during a hurricane that was battering the North Atlantic coast, this writer, then a newspaper columnist, visited the New York weather bureau offices on the 25th floor of an old skyscraper at the tip of Manhattan. Huge windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, faced the lower harbor. As I talked with the forecaster I could see the window panes ballooning inward under the pressure of the high winds. An hour later, while the storm was still roaring over the city, I drove across the Brooklyn Bridge. Gale winds whistled in the network of cables and shrieked about the high towers, but the roadway under our tires was as steady as the pavements had been on land. The Roeblings, father and son, had built a stout bridge.  The completed Brooklyn Bridge, from a Photograph made in the 1880's. (Kean Archives) Allan Keller is a former New York, City newspaper columnist. For more reading he suggests: Joseph Gies, Bridges and Men, and Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge. |
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