75th ANNIVERSARY EHIBITION
THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM
April 29 - July 27, 1958
Pamphlet honoring the 75th Anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge, an Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum introduced by the Brooklyn Bridge Diamond Jubilee Ball sponsored by the Community Committee |
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Tribute to the Brooklyn Bridge By D. B. STEINMAN Bridge Engineer, author of "The Builders of the Bridge; The Story of John Roebling and His Son" On this occasion of the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, I am glad to record my personal heartfelt tribute to this grand old structure, not only as "The Bridge" that has been my inspiration since boyhood but also as the best known and the best loved bridge in the world. When the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883, it was the engineering achievement of the century - the longest single span ever built, the tallest and strongest, the first suspension bridge in the world to use steel cables and steel trusses. Today there are bigger bridges - but they never could have been built had not Brooklyn Bridge shown the way. And its story is still the greatest bridge-building story of all. DREAM BRIDGE John A. Roebling was the pioneer genius who developed the art of build- ing great spans suspended from wire cables. In 1831 he came to America as a young immigrant, fleeing autocratic oppression and seeking freedom- freedom to work, to build, to achieve. During the years that followed he proved his talent and genius as an inventor and as a bridge-builder, inventing wire rope and building one great span after another. In 1867 he was called to New York to plan and build his crowning lifework - the great span over the East River to connect Brooklyn and New York. For two years he worked feverishly to complete his plans, as though in a race against death. It was to be his dream bridge - the consummation of his life's ambition. From his first sight of a small suspension span in his student days, all of his longing, all of his preparation, all of his striving, were pointed toward his goal. By iron determination, by relentless concentration, by unsparing energy, by achievement after achievement, he had won this opportunity to create the world's greatest span. And now, from his brain and his soul, combining the genius of the mathematician, the builder and the artist, he had crystallized the vision-the lines and the form, the power and the grace, the beauty and the magic of his masterwork. He had battled and overcome the forces of doubt and prejudice, and he had finally won the right to go ahead with the building of the Bridge. A WORK OF ART In his heart and in his mind he saw the great bridge of his dreams- the magnificent pylons, enduring as the pyramids, founded on solid rock deep below the rushing tides; the powerful cables of steel sweeping down and upward in the arc of Nature's law; and the arching roadway carrying the multitudes over a span greater and more beautiful than the world had ever seen. He saw it clearly as it was to be, "a great work of art," "the great engineering work of this Continent and of the age." Time was to justify his prophecy, and posterity was to behold the magic and the power of the thing he had created. But he, who had dreamed and planned all this, was not to see the time-defying towers, or the vast sweep of the mighty cables, or the rushing thousands crossing on the far.flung span. He was not to see his bridge take form. He was not even to see the first stone laid. TRAGEDY STRIKES Tragedy struck. On July 6, 1869, while he was making the final surveys, the accident occurred which took the life of John A. Roebling. At the end of the race, with the goal in sight, fate exacted its toll, a toll doubly cruel by its timing. The master builder's dying words were, "The bridge will be beautiful!" With its inspiration gone, the Brooklyn Bridge seemed impossible to build. A new guiding spirit was needed to carry the great work forward. By destiny or prevision, the master builder had prepared a deputy who was indeed a part of himself - his own son, Colonel Washington A. Roebling. This young but able engineer had been trained and prepared for this task. He had been given the best engineering education of the time; he had received his practical training under the greatest bridge-builder of his day - his own father; and his own judgment, initiative and courage had been tried and tested on the battlefield. During the days and nights that the work was going on under the bed of the East River, the young chief engineer was continually in the caisson, personally directing the efforts of his men and setting an example of devotion and courage. Because this part of the work was critical, he actually spent more hours in the working chamber than anyone else. Night and day he worked with the men under the heart- crushing air pressure, until it wore out his strength. CRIPPLED INVALID One afternoon in the early summer of 1872, Colonel Roebling had to be carried out of the caisson, nearly insensible, a victim of the dread caisson disease. All night his death was hourly expected. At the age of 35, his days of physical exertion were ended. He remained painfully paralyzed, doomed to lifelong suffering, with every nerve and muscle tortured with pain. Thenceforth this man, who had been full of life and hope and daring at the inception of the work, was a crippled invalid, confined to his home. Just as his brilliance as an engineer was at its height, and just as his masterwork was passing its crisis, he was struck down. The Chief Engineer was helpless, except for his fighting spirit and his active brain. From the hour of his breakdown in the caisson, there was not a day when his injured body was not racked with pain. But the work had to go forward. From his sickroom, the stricken man continued to direct it in every detail. Fearful that he might not live to finish the work himself, he fought his pain and feverishly spent his time in writing and drawing. His plans, his ideas, his specialized knowledge, could not be allowed to die; they must be recorded and made available to his assistants. THROUGH FIELDGLASSES His wife, Emily, was as rare and strong as the man she tended. She met the emergency by becoming his capable aide. Instead of cryjng hysterically over her husband's misfortune and sinking down nerveless and helpless into the privileged softness of womanhood, she set herself at once to the task of acquiring the knowledge necessary to become a real helpmate to him in the critical situation, She grasped her husband's ideas and she learned to speak the language of the engineers. She made daily visits to the bridge to inspect the work for the Colonel and to carry his instructions to the staff. She became his co-worker and his principal assistant - his inspector, messenger, ambassador and spokesman - his sole contact with the outside world. The Colonel's continued planning and direction of the work, despite constant pain and a nervous collapse, was an outstanding triumph of consecration and will power . Through fieldglasses, from the window of his sickroom, he watched the building of the masonry towers and later the stringing of the cables. Though he was absent in body; it was still his spirit that prevailed and his brain that directed the work. The bridge was his - by right of inheritance, by his own labors and by his own sacrifice. MASTER BUILDERS At last the great day came - May 24, 1883. The great work was finished. It had cost over twenty lives, and had taken more than thirteen years to build. The two master builders had paid their price--0ne with his life, the other with a crippled body. The father had dreamed the Bridge. The son, with gallant fighting spirit, had carried the dream to completion. No inspired builder of a medieval cathedral brought to his work a greater singleness of purpose, a more selfless devotion, than the two Roeblings lavished on their master bridge. The best in their characters went into its building. TIMELESS STRENGTH There is timeless strength in those towers, and poetry in the cable-borne span. The two are harmoniously joined. Between the two pierced granite towers, the arching roadway cslowly sweeps upward to meet the swift .downward sweep of the cables. These curves and the proportions were not accidents. It is no accident that the Brooklyn Bridge still reiriains the most satisfying aesthetically of all great bridges - because its two master builders were artists at heart. Of granite and steel and dreams, the Bridge was built. 
THE ROEBLINGS-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES ROEBLING, JOHN AUGUSTUS |
| 1806 | Born June 12 at Muehlhausen, Thuringia, Germany. Studied engineering at the Royal Polytechnic Institute at Berlin. Courses included architecture and engineering, bridge construction, hydraulics, languages and philosophy. He was a pupil of the great German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. | |
| 1826 |
Received degree of Civil Engineer. Thereafter worked for three years for the Prussian Government on roarl building. Also made special studies of a chain suspension bridge at Bamberg in Bavaria and presented his observations of the structure as thesis for his State examination. | |
| 1831 | Left Muehlhausen with his brother Karl for Bremen, thence to U.S.A. to find land and settle, seeking refuge from German autocracy and reactionary politics. Settled in Butler County, Pa. with a group of compatriots. | |
| 1836 | Married Johanna Herting, daughter of a German emigrant. | |
| 1837 | Became naturalized citizen, and went to Harrisburg to work on state canal projects. Began experiments with manufacture of wire rope. | |
| 1841 | Manufactured first wire rope in America in factory in Saxonburg, equipped with machinery of his own design. | |
| 1844-45 | Built wooden aqueduct for Pennsylvania Canal. | |
| 1846 | Completed first suspension bridge, built to carry highway over Monongahela River at Pittsburgh. | |
| 1848-50 | Constructed four suspension bridges for the Delaware and Hudson Canal. | |
| 1849 | Moved factory to Trenton, N. J. | |
| 1851-55 | Suspension bridge at Niagara Falls. | |
| 1856-57 | Bridge over the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, Ky. His son, Washington A., assisted him for the first time. | |
| 1858-60 | Bridge over Allegheny River at Pittsburgh. | |
| 1867 | John A. Roebling was appointed Chief Engineer of work on bridge spanning the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. | |
| 1869 |
June 28, received foot injury when a ferry drove into a cluster of piles on which he was standing while making observations at bridge site. After amputation of toes, tetanus set in and he died on July 22.
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ROEBLING, WASHINGTON AUGUSTUS |
| 1837 | Born May 26 in Saxonburg, Butler County, Pa., eldest of nine children. | |
| ca. 1850 | Entered Trenton Academy. After four years of preparation matriculated at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y. The Rensselaer curriculum of the day he described as "that terrible avalanche of figures and facts into young brains not qualified to assimilate them as yet"; his class numbered 65 on entering but only 12 were graduated three years later. | |
| 1857 | After receiving engineer's degree, went to work in his father's wire rope mill. | |
| 1858-60 | After a year in the mill, joined his father in Pittsburgh to assist in the construction of the Allegheny River Bridge. | |
| 1860 | Returned to Trenton, N. J. | |
| 1861 | April 16. Four days after attack on Fort Sumter, enlisted as private in the National Guard of New Jersey. In June joined 83rd New York Infantry. | |
| 1862 | Became a second lieutenant in the 6th N. Y. Battery. | |
| 1864 | Accepted commission as major of volunteers, later brevetted lieutenant- colonel for gallant service before Richmond. | |
| 1865 |
Brevetted colonel of volunteers for gallant and meritorious service during the War. Married Emily Warren, sister of Major-General G. K. Warren on whose staff he was serving. | |
| 1865-67 | Assisted his father in completing the bridge between Cincinnati and Covington. | |
| 1869 |
Spent one year in Europe, conferring with engineers in England, France and Germany with special emphasis on principles and practice of caisson foundations preparatory to work on Brooklyn Bridge. While visiting Muehlhausen, his father's birthplace, Emily Warren Roebling gave birth to their only son, John A. II. August. Succeeded his father as chief engineer in charge of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. | |
| 1872 | Succumbed to the caisson disease which left him a permanent invalid. From this time on until the completion of the Bridge in 1883, he directed the work from his room with the aid of his wife who became his co-worker and principal assistant. | |
| 1884-88 | Lived in Troy, N. Y., while his son studied at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. | |
| 1888 | Established permanent home in Trenton, N. J. | |
| 1903 | Emily Warren Roebling died on February 28. | |
| 1908 | Took as his second wife Mrs. Cornelia Witsell Farrow of Charieston, N. C. | |
| 1917 | Died in Trenton, in June. |
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