THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE was opened on May 24, 1883. During the previous two and a half centuries of New York’s history no bridge had spanned the East River to connect Manhattan Island with Long Island.
John Augustus Roebling, the man destined to succeed in this undertaking, was born in the German state of Thuringia in 1806. Brilliant, imaginative, and ambitious, Roebling studied at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, then the world’s best engineering school. Roebling was twenty-five years old when he came here in 1831. He was a many-sided genius, like Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Goethe. He was a master of mathematics, a scholar who put together a magnificent private library, a philosophy student who wrote a 2,000-page book on the universe, a musician who played the piano and flute, a linguist who spoke German and English and French, an engineer, a technologist, and an inventor. Despite all his many abilities, Roebling had just one ambition—to become a builder of great bridges. He was a man in a hurry. Forever fighting the clock, Roebling refused to see anyone five minutes late for an appointment. Still, his compassionate nature attracted both men and women.
Peter Cooper came to know this young man, instantly recognized his genius, and encouraged him. Cooper had a son-in-law, named Abram S. Hewitt, who was later elected mayor of New York. On June 19, 1857, Roebling wrote Hewitt a letter in which he proposed to build a bridge across the East River. During the 1840’s the idea of such a bridge had been raised, because in winter months the ferry trip between New York and Brooklyn was slow and uncomfortable and dangerous. Most New Yorkers regarded the project with indifference because they lived where others wished to come, but many Brooklynites who worked in Manhattan had to use the ferry twice daily. Roebling was the first engineer to suggest that a bridge was feasible. Hewitt had his letter published in the New York Journal of Commerce.
By this time Roebling had fabricated the first wire rope in America, established a wire factory in Trenton, New Jersey, built several suspension bridges, and won a good reputation. However, publication of his letter aroused little interest because of New Yorkers’ smugness and because of the outbreak of the Civil War. After the war Roebling submitted to a group of Brooklyn civic leaders a set of plans calling for construction of a bridge twice as long as any in existence and capable of bearing a load of 18,700 tons. He estimated that it would cost $4,000,000.
Except for a few enlightened New Yorkers, such as Hewitt, enthusiasm for the Brooklyn Bridge came not from the people of Manhattan, not from public officials, but from a small group of Brooklyn’s private citizens. One prominent New Yorker said, “Our city is not a jealous city, but then to ask it to build a bridge in order to send its trade to a neighboring city is asking a good deal even from the best of natures.” Another New Yorker warned that a bridge would “drain the resources of the city of New York in order to fertilize the sandy wastes of Long Island.” The Union Ferry Company, which was transporting thousands of commuters a year between Brooklyn and New York, certainly did not favor the bridge.
The winter of 1866 proved decisive. So bitterly cold was the weather and so choked with ice was the East River that ferry traffic became annoyingly slow. Brooklyn’s daily commuters figured that it took them longer to get to Manhattan than it took railway passengers to make the 150-mile trip from Albany to Manhattan.
On the frigid evening of December 21 a Brooklyn businessman, named Alexander McCue, was surprised to see William C. Kingsley drive up to his home in a carriage. Kingsley was a prominent contractor and a Brooklyn civic leader. He already had convinced McCue that a bridge could and should be built. Now Kingsley asked his friend, “Will you drive with me to Mr. Murphy’s this evening? I want to get him to consent to prepare a bill for the bridge.”
Henry C. Murphy had been editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, had risen to power as the Democratic leader of Brooklyn, had served a term as mayor, and was now a state senator. That winter evening he was resting on his estate in what today is Owls Head Park in western Brooklyn near Colonial Road and Wakeman Place. After hearing Kingsley’s invitation, McCue had looked out a window of his home and shivered. However, McCue was impressed with Kingsley’s electric personality and hoped that he would win over Murphy. Climbing into Kingsley’s carriage and pulling buffalo robes over their laps, the two men braved the night to drive to the Murphy estate.
The senator was astounded to see them emerge from the winter wasteland but hurried them inside so that they could get warm in front of a roaring fire. After they exchanged pleasantries, Kingsley explained their mission. He declared that a bridge was badly needed. Senator Murphy raised objections. Kingsley met all of them. Kingsley went on talking, knitting a logical argument that fascinated Murphy. At last, raising a hand in a gesture of surrender, the senator said that he agreed. It was late in the morning when Kingsley and McCue left Murphy’s home, but they had his promise to draft an enabling bill.
Senator Murphy’s measure was passed by the state legislature on April 16, 1867. It granted a charter to a company of private citizens to build a toll bridge across the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Kingsley was so optimistic that even before die bill passed, he signed contracts worth thousands of dollars for construction materials. Thirty-nine investors—most of them from Brooklyn, a few of them from New York—met on May 13, 1867, to organize the New York Bridge Company. Three days later Murphy was elected its president, and three committees were appointed. John A. Roebling was made chief engineer at $8,000 a year. He predicted that this “will not only be the greatest bridge in existence, but it will be the greatest engineering work of this continent and of the age.”
Although the company was privately owned, the state permitted New York and Brooklyn to buy part of its stock. At a meeting of New York’s city council it was proposed that the city buy $1,500,000 worth of bridge securities. The aldermen, with their usual avarice, forbade the city comptroller to make this purchase unless and until some money changed hands. Bridge company officials, bending to political reality, gave Boss Tweed $65,000 to pass along to the boys in City Hall. For this service Tweed got 560 shares of stock, with a par value of $40,000, for himself.
By the end of 1868 Brooklyn had subscribed $3,000,000 worth of securities and New York half as much, the total capital issue being $5,000,000. The biggest single subscriber was William C. Kingsley. Despite the fact that money now was available, many people doubted the wisdom of the whole project. They were staggered by the length of the span Roebling proposed. Owners of the East River ferries fought the bridge. Editor Horace Greeley and Brooklyn Mayor Martin Kalbfleisch expressed their nervousness. That Roebling! Now he wanted to use steel wire in the bridge instead of iron wire. Why, this never had been done in the history of the world! To allay fears, Roebling invited a board of prominent engineers to review his construction plans, and in May, 1869, they unanimously agreed that for strength and durability Roebling’s bridge was more than adequate.
Congress passed a bill authorizing construction of the bridge, and President Grant signed it. The Secretary of War ordered three military engineers to ascertain if shipping along the East River would be impeded by the proposed bridge. They recommended raising the span from 130 to 135 feet above the river at mean high water, and Roebling agreed. The height became standard for future bridges over navigable waters in America. When the War Department approved the project on June 21, 1869, the last legal hurdle had been cleared.
Laborers went into action on January 2, 1870, by starting to clear the site in Brooklyn where the bridge’s granite and limestone tower would be erected. It took a total of thirteen years and five months to build the Brooklyn Bridge. On December 30, 1873, Alfred E. Smith was born in a four-story tenement at 174 South Street in Manhattan just below the growing structure. “The bridge and I grew up together,” he said in later years. “I spent a lot of time superintending the job. I have never lost the memory of the admiration and envy I felt for the men swarming up, stringing the cables, putting in the roadways, as the bridge took shape.” As many as 600 workmen were employed on it at the same time, and more than 20 lives were lost before the project was finished. Al Smith added, “I often heard my mother say . . . that if the people of New York had had any idea of the number of human lives sacrificed in the sinking of the caissons for the towers of the Brooklyn bridge, in all probability they would have halted its progress.”
The Brooklyn Bridge was one of the first bridges to use pneumatic caissons for working under water. Sandhogs labored in yellow pine chambers 9½ feet high and about 50 feet square. Lighting was a problem: Calcium lights were expensive, oil lamps were smoky, gas lamps raised the temperature, and even candles were costly. At last 14 calcium lights and 60 gas burners were installed at a cost of $5,000. From time to time fires started, pneumatic chambers blew out, and sandhogs developed the bends.
On July 6, 1869, John Roebling stood on a Brooklyn wharf surveying the locations of the main piers, when his right foot was crushed between an oncoming ferry and the ferry slip. He was rushed to his son’s home in Brooklyn Heights, where his toes were amputated without anesthesia. Lockjaw set in, and the great bridge designer died on July 22 at the age of sixty-three.
His thirty-two-year-old son, Washington A. Roebling, had worked with his father a full year before this fatal accident. Himself a graduate engineer, Washington Roebling inherited his father’s engineering skill, Germanic thoroughness, courage, and analytical powers, if not all his creative brilliance. One month after his father’s death, Washington Roebling was made chief engineer of the project. It now became his passion to complete his father’s dream, but in the spring of 1872 the son was carried out of a caisson suffering from the bends. Only thirty-five years old, his days of physical exertion were over, for he was left partially paralyzed and doomed to a lifetime of suffering. Even the mere sound of a human voice was unbearable to him.
The onetime aide had to find his own aide. Fortunately, his wife filled the bill. Emily Warren Roebling was a remarkable woman. Under her husband’s guidance she studied engineering, mastered higher mathematics, served as an extension of his brain, and functioned as field marshal on the construction site. In their Brooklyn Heights home Washington Roebling crouched in a wheelchair at the window, field glasses at hand, to watch from an agonizing distance as the work went on, day by day, month by month, year by year.
At times construction stopped for lack of funds. Then, in 1875, the state legislature took over the project and converted it into a public trust. Thus, two-thirds of the bridge was paid for and owned by the city of Brooklyn, while one-third was paid for and owned by New York City. At long last the formal opening was scheduled for May 24, 1883.
The dedication of the Brooklyn Bridge was an event of national importance. Nearly every state sent representatives, and railroads ran excursion trains from neighboring cities so that thousands of non-New Yorkers might attend. Business was suspended for the day, and schools were closed. Flags fluttered from windows and ships, grandstands were erected on buildings near both ends of the bridge, and tens of thousands of Sunday-clad people thronged toward the grand new structure.
Glorious spring weather crowned the celebration. The sun warmed people perching on fire escapes, glinted from the buttons of marines, and burnished the gray and white uniforms of the “Dandy” Seventh Regiment. Women shielded their coiffures with gay parasols, but the sunlight spun in golden whorls on the tops of men’s silk hats whenever they turned their heads. Chester A. Arthur, once collector of the port of New York but now President of the United States, had arrived from Washington with his Cabinet members to take part in the opening of the bridge. The President was suffering from stomach cramps that day, and his muttonchop whiskers quivered a little with pain; but he rallied when he neared the Manhattan approach to the bridge and saw the stupendous crowd. He was accompanied by Grover Cleveland, now die governor of New York, a massive man with a walrus mustache and heavy jowls. With Arthur and Cleveland was New York’s bearded and handsome mayor, Franklin Edson. The three dignitaries and other officials walked to the middle of the bridge as cannon roared, sirens shrieked, horns blatted, and a million people cheered. At the center of the bridge they were met by the mayor of Brooklyn, thirty-two-year-old Seth Low, the youngest mayor in Brooklyn’s history. Low accepted the bridge in behalf of his community, while Edson accepted it in the name of New York.
Washington Roebling was unable to be there because of his crippled condition. Tended by his misty-eyed wife, he sat at a window of their Brooklyn Heights home to watch the event through field glasses held in trembling hands. He choked with pride in his accomplishment, and he ached with pain because his father had not lived to share the moment of exultation. Across the sun-flecked river and to the lonely window came the crash of bands and the cries of people. That evening the President of the United States, the governor of New York, and the mayors of New York and Brooklyn, together with other notables, marched to the residence of Washington Roebling to take his hand, bow low, and pay homage to the engineer who had sacrificed his health to build the Brooklyn Bridge.
With the possible exception of the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, the Brooklyn Bridge was the greatest engineering feat in the world since completion of the Erie Canal. It was the first bridge to connect New York and Brooklyn, the first to use steel cables, and the greatest structure to date made of steel, and it had the longest span of any bridge on earth. It inspired more paintings and etchings, novels and short stories, plays and poems, photographs and conversations than any other suspension bridge in the world. Above all, the Brooklyn Bridge made inevitable the consolidation of New York and Brooklyn, thus adding stature to the giant metropolis.
Decoration Day fell six days after the gala opening, and holiday-happy people promenaded across this Eighth Wonder of the World. J. Pierpont Morgan’s yacht was being brought out of winter drydock, and ten-year-old Al Smith was playing with boyfriends under the Manhattan end of the bridge. About 4 P.M. Smith and his pals were dumbfounded when the air began raining coats and hats and parasols and pocketbooks. Craning their necks to look up, they saw a line of struggling people, heard chilling screams, and sensed that panic had broken out.
Newspapers had printed scare stories about the danger of soldiers marching in step across the new bridge; it was believed that their rhythmic tread would set up vibrations capable of destroying the bridge. Someone may have remembered these warnings that Decoration Day as regiments of the national guard marched onto the span, for suddenly there was a shriek of fear. This triggered a stampede among the promenaders. Mad confusion ensued. People tried to run to the shore. They struggled to push past one another. They fought. They clawed. They climbed on top of each other. They throbbed with terror—without knowing why. Bridgeworkers tore out railings on both sides of the bridge to relieve the pressure, but it was fifteen minutes before the panic was quelled. Twelve persons were trampled to death or pushed off the bridge. In addition to the dozen fatalities, thirty-five people were injured.
After the shock of the disaster had worn off, the bridge became a place of pleasure and recreation. Al Smith doted on singing “Danny by My Side,” whose opening line is “The Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday is known as lovers’ lane.”