Brooklyn Bridge (1883): The Roeblings' Steel-Wire Masterpiece

The Brooklyn Bridge opened on 24 May 1883 across the East River, linking the cities of New York and Brooklyn, which were then separate. Designed by John A. Roebling and built under his son Washington and daughter-in-law Emily, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world and the first to hang from cables of steel wire. Its fourteen-year construction cost lives and fortunes, and its opening was one of the great public celebrations of nineteenth-century America.

Background: two cities and a river

In the 1860s Brooklyn was one of the largest cities in the United States, and tens of thousands of people crossed the East River to Manhattan each day by ferry. In winter, ice and fog could halt the ferries for hours. A fixed crossing had been discussed for decades, but the river was wide and busy with shipping, so any bridge had to be very high and very long.

John Augustus Roebling (1806–1869), a German-born engineer, had pioneered wire-cable suspension bridges in the United States, including a railway bridge at Niagara Falls and the Cincinnati–Covington bridge over the Ohio. In 1867 the New York legislature chartered a company to build an East River bridge, and Roebling was appointed chief engineer.

In June 1869, while Roebling was surveying the site, his foot was crushed between a ferry and the pilings at the Fulton Ferry slip in Brooklyn. Some of his toes were amputated, he refused much conventional treatment, and he died of tetanus on 22 July 1869. Responsibility passed to his son, Washington Augustus Roebling (1837–1926), a Civil War veteran who had worked with his father on earlier bridges.

Caissons and the bends

Work began on 3 January 1870. To build the foundations of the two towers, workers dug out the riverbed inside caissons, huge upside-down wooden boxes filled with compressed air to keep out water and mud. As they dug, the weight of masonry built on top pushed the caissons deeper. The Brooklyn caisson reached about 13.5 metres below high water, and the Manhattan caisson about 24 metres.

Working in compressed air caused a mysterious illness then called caisson disease and now known as decompression sickness, or the bends. Coming up too quickly from the high pressure could cause severe pain, paralysis and death. Over a hundred cases were recorded, and several men died. Washington Roebling himself, who spent long hours in the caissons, was struck down in 1872 and left in pain and partly disabled for years.

Emily Warren Roebling

Confined to his house on Columbia Heights in Brooklyn, Washington supervised the work by watching through a telescope and sending written instructions. His wife, Emily Warren Roebling (1843–1903), became his link to the project. She studied mathematics, materials and cable construction, carried his instructions to the engineers, dealt with officials and contractors and answered questions on his behalf. Many contemporaries came to regard her as effectively running the work, and in 1882, when there were moves to replace her husband, she defended his position, including in an address to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Cables and controversy

The towers, built of granite and limestone, were finished in 1876. Spinning the four main cables began in 1877; each cable contains more than 5,000 parallel steel wires bound together. In 1878 it was discovered that a contractor, J. Lloyd Haigh, had supplied defective wire that had passed inspection by fraud. It could not all be removed, so extra wires were added to compensate.

The project was also caught up in New York politics. William M. Tweed, the corrupt political boss, had been involved in its early financing, and newspapers repeatedly questioned the cost, delays and safety. The final cost was about 15 million dollars.

Opening day

The bridge opened on Thursday, 24 May 1883. Before the ceremony Emily Roebling was given the honour of being the first person to ride across it, in a carriage. President Chester A. Arthur and Governor Grover Cleveland walked across from Manhattan and were greeted in Brooklyn by Mayor Seth Low. Washington Roebling, still too unwell to attend, watched from his window and received the president at his home afterwards.

Ships in the river sounded their whistles, bands played, and in the evening a great fireworks display lit up the sky. About 150,000 people crossed the bridge on the first day after it opened to the public.

Tragedy followed within a week. On 30 May 1883, Memorial Day, a rumour that the bridge was collapsing caused a crush on a stairway at the Manhattan end, and twelve people died. In May 1884 the showman P. T. Barnum led a parade of elephants across the bridge, partly to reassure the public that it was strong.

The workers

The bridge was built largely by immigrant labourers, many of them Irish and German, who were paid about two dollars or a little more a day for dangerous work. Men in the caissons laboured in heat, damp and dim gaslight, and many fell ill with the bends without knowing why. Others worked high on the towers and on the catwalks between them as the cables were spun. Accidents with falling stone, snapping wires and derricks caused further deaths and injuries. Their names are rarely remembered, but the bridge was as much their achievement as the Roeblings'.

By the numbers

Legacy

The Brooklyn Bridge helped tie Brooklyn to Manhattan, and in 1898 Brooklyn became a borough of the consolidated City of New York. It carried pedestrians, carriages and cable-hauled trains, and it still carries cars and a busy elevated walkway. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

Long-span bridge building advanced quickly in the decades that followed, from the steel cantilevers of the Forth Bridge in Scotland to the great suspension bridges of the twentieth century, which built on Roebling’s steel-wire cables. Earlier works such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge had shown the elegance of the form; the Brooklyn Bridge proved it could work on a metropolitan scale. Writers and painters from Hart Crane to Joseph Stella made it a symbol of modern America.

Timeline

• 1867: The New York legislature charters the bridge company; John A. Roebling becomes chief engineer.
• 1869, 22 July: John Roebling dies of tetanus after an accident at the site.
• 1870, 3 January: Construction begins.
• 1872: Washington Roebling is disabled by caisson disease.
• 1876: The towers are completed.
• 1878: Fraudulent wire supplied by J. Lloyd Haigh is discovered.
• 1883, 24 May: The bridge opens with a ceremony and fireworks.
• 1883, 30 May: A panic on the bridge kills twelve people.
• 1884, May: P. T. Barnum leads elephants across the bridge.

Why it matters

The Brooklyn Bridge showed that steel-wire suspension bridges could span great distances and carry heavy city traffic. It also became a story of family endurance, of the human cost of engineering and of Emily Roebling’s overlooked role, which is now widely recognised. More than a century later it remains one of the best-known landmarks in the world.