Description
The Brooklyn Bridge is the stone-and-steel suspension bridge that links Manhattan and Brooklyn across the East River. Opened in 1883, it was the first fixed crossing of the river, and today it is one of the most photographed and most walked places in New York.
Walking is the point. A raised wooden promenade runs down the middle, above the roads, and lets you cross on foot or by bike among a web of steel cables that fan out from the towers like harp strings.
Look at the two neo-Gothic towers, 278 feet tall, with pointed stone arches that the roadways run through. Look at the view of Lower Manhattan too, best from the Brooklyn side, with the skyscrapers rising behind the river.
The man who designed it never saw a single stone of it laid. In 1869, during the final surveys, a ferry crushed John Roebling's foot against a piling. Tetanus killed him a few weeks later, and the job passed to his son Washington, aged 32.
It was a job that would cost Washington dearly too. To set the towers on bedrock, men dug inside huge wooden boxes sunk into the riverbed and filled with compressed air. Many came up with "the bends," which no one yet understood. Washington was one of them.
Paralyzed, he directed the work from his bedroom, watching it through a telescope. For eleven years the go-between was his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, who learned catenary curves and cable building and in practice ran the site.
The bridge opened on May 24, 1883, with a main span of 1,595 feet, the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time. An estimated 27 men had died building it.
Six days later a woman fell on a stairway and the panic crushed at least twelve people. To prove the bridge was sound, in 1884 P. T. Barnum marched 21 elephants across it, led by the famous Jumbo.
Don't miss
• The walk across the promenade.
• The neo-Gothic towers.
• The view of Lower Manhattan.
Did you know?
• A contractor supplied substandard wire for the cables; it was too late to remove it, so 150 extra wires were added to each cable.
• The vaults under the Manhattan end were once rented out to store wine, kept at a steady 60 °F.
• In the 1950s a Cold War fallout shelter was built into one of the arches; its supplies were found still there half a century later.
Walking is the point. A raised wooden promenade runs down the middle, above the roads, and lets you cross on foot or by bike among a web of steel cables that fan out from the towers like harp strings.
Look at the two neo-Gothic towers, 278 feet tall, with pointed stone arches that the roadways run through. Look at the view of Lower Manhattan too, best from the Brooklyn side, with the skyscrapers rising behind the river.
The man who designed it never saw a single stone of it laid. In 1869, during the final surveys, a ferry crushed John Roebling's foot against a piling. Tetanus killed him a few weeks later, and the job passed to his son Washington, aged 32.
It was a job that would cost Washington dearly too. To set the towers on bedrock, men dug inside huge wooden boxes sunk into the riverbed and filled with compressed air. Many came up with "the bends," which no one yet understood. Washington was one of them.
Paralyzed, he directed the work from his bedroom, watching it through a telescope. For eleven years the go-between was his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, who learned catenary curves and cable building and in practice ran the site.
The bridge opened on May 24, 1883, with a main span of 1,595 feet, the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time. An estimated 27 men had died building it.
Six days later a woman fell on a stairway and the panic crushed at least twelve people. To prove the bridge was sound, in 1884 P. T. Barnum marched 21 elephants across it, led by the famous Jumbo.
Don't miss
• The walk across the promenade.
• The neo-Gothic towers.
• The view of Lower Manhattan.
Did you know?
• A contractor supplied substandard wire for the cables; it was too late to remove it, so 150 extra wires were added to each cable.
• The vaults under the Manhattan end were once rented out to store wine, kept at a steady 60 °F.
• In the 1950s a Cold War fallout shelter was built into one of the arches; its supplies were found still there half a century later.