Roeblings and Bridge Building: a Family Storey

ROEBLINGS AND BRIDGE BUILDING: A FAMILY STOREY

Family

John Augustus Roebling (born Johann August Röbling, June 12, 1806 in Mühlhausen - July 22, 1869) was a German-born civil engineer famous for his wire rope suspension bridge designs, in particular, the design of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The eldest son of John Roebling, Washington Augustus Roebling, was born in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, a town co-founded by his father and his uncle, Karl Roebling. His early schooling consisted of tutoring by Riedel and under Henne in Pittsburgh. He eventually attended the Trenton Academy and acquired further education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, from 1854-57. Following his graduation as civil engineer (C.E.), he joined his father to work as a bridge builder. From 1858 to 1860, he assisted his father on the Allegheny Bridge project, living in a boarding house on Penn Street. Following the completion of the bridge, he returned to Trenton to work in his father's wire mill.

After the completion of the Brooklyn project, Roebling and his wife Emily Roebling, lived in Troy, New York, from 1884-88, as their only child, John A. Roebling, II, also attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). When their son graduated, the Roeblings returned to Trenton, moving to 191 West State Street in 1892. From 1902-1903 Roebling served as President of the Alumni Association at Rensselaer. His wife Emily died in 1903 from stomach cancer. Roebling remarried in 1908 to Cornelia Witsell Farrow of Charleston, South Carolina.

His namesake, Washington Augustus Roebling II, only son of his brother Charles G. Roebling, went down with the RMS Titanic in 1912.

Following the sudden death of his nephew, Karl Gustavus Roebling, in 1921, Roebling again became president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company at age 84. He died in 1926, after being bedridden for two months, at age 89.

Roebling's most passionate hobby was collecting rocks and minerals. His collection of over 16,000 specimens was donated by his son, John A. Roebling, II, to the Smithsonian Institution and became an important part of its mineral and gem collection. A plethora of his manuscripts, photographs, and publications, can be found in the Roebling collections at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Roebling's 3rd son Charles Roebling designed and invented the 80 ton wire rope machine and founded the town of Roebling, New Jersey where the John A. Roebling and Sons company steel mill was built. His grandson, Washington A. Roebling, II, died on the RMS Titanic. His great-grandson, Donald Roebling was a noted philanthropist and inventor who devised the amphtrack.

Legacy: The Brooklyn Bridge, New York, USA

In 1867 Roebling started design work on what is now called the Brooklyn Bridge, spanning the East River in New York. Roebling proposed a bridge of 465m, with two masonry towers in the Esat River serving as main piers. The bridge actually built is longer-486m, the longest suspension bridge up to that time. It was the first bridge to make use of galvanized steel wire; earlier suspension bridges used either wrought iron cables or suspension chains.

The cables were spun on site from a previously built footbridge. Massive anchorages for the cables had to be built, as there were no natural formations to support them. The bridge carried two elevated railroad tracks, two trolley car tracks, single lane roadways flanking the trolley tracks, and a central walkway. Stiffening trusses were added to insure against sway- a characteristic of suspension structures.

Disaster struck early in the history of the bridge. One day in 1869, even before construction commenced, Roebling was standing on the edge of a Brooklyn wharf to carry out survey for the main piers, when a ferry collided with the bulkhead of the wharf. His foot was crushed and his injured toes were amputated. He refused further medical treatment and wanted to cure his foot by "water therapy" (continuous pouring of water over the wound). While in the hospital, Roebling demanded constant updates on the progress of his greatest work and continued to help solve onsite problems. But his condition deteriorated until it was clear he had tetanus, and 24 days after the accident he was dead.

Roebling's son Washington Roebling and his daughter-in-law Emily Warren Roebling continued his work on the Brooklyn Bridge for the following 14 years. Washington Roebling’s health was also doomed to suffer from the bridge. After working for long hours at high atmospheric pressure, he collapsed with decompression sickness in May 1872. He was partly paralyzed and was able to supervise construction only through binoculars from his balcony.

But his wife, Emily, threw herself into the study of engineering, and was soon able to inspect the site each day. Emily was to relay information from Washington to his assistants and report the progress of work on the bridge to her husband. She developed an extensive knowledge of strength of materials, stress analysis, cable construction, and calculating catenary curves through Washington’s teachings. For the next fourteen years, Emily’s dedication in aiding her husband in the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge was unyielding. She dealt with politicians, competing engineers, and all those associated with the work on the bridge to the point where people believed she was behind the bridge’s design. It was suspected at the time that she was even more involved with the project, inputting her own ideas and making crucial alterations to the designs. People were worried that the bridge was partly the work of a woman, and this was thought to be highly dangerous!

In 1882 the Mayor of Brooklyn resolved to replace Washington Roebling on the ground of physical incapacity. Emily Roebling requested permission to address the American Society of Civil Engineers, the first time that a woman had done so- and as a result Washington Roebling remained the Chief Engineer of this project.

After the opening ceremony in 1883, many citizens and officials marched to his home to honor Washington Roebling. Emily herself took the first ride across with the President of the United States. The opening ceremony was attended by several thousand people and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower. Arthur shook hands with Washington Roebling at Roebling's home, after the ceremony. Washington Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony but held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display.

On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Long Island. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost $15.5 million to build and approximately 27 people died during its construction

In recognition of her work, the Emily Roebling Scholarship is given to deserving female Engineering students at Rensselar Polytechnic University, New York. One week after the opening, on May 30, 1883, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which crushed and killed at least twelve people. On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.

At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world — 50% longer than any previously built — and it has become a treasured landmark. For several years the towers were the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. Their architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers.

Brooklyn Bridge was the first long-span suspension bridge to carry motor traffic, and it quickly became the model for the great suspension bridges of the following century and also an icon of New York City. Today the Brooklyn Bridge holds a plaque dedicating the memory of Emily, her husband, and her father-in-law. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s — well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh — by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. They turned out to be unnecessary, but were kept for their distinctive beauty.

Changes in use:

At various times, the bridge has carried horse-drawn and trolley traffic; at present, it has six lanes for motor vehicles, with a separate walkway along the centerline for pedestrians and bicycles. Due to the roadway's height (11 feet posted) and weight (6,000 lb posted) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using this bridge. The two inside traffic lanes once carried elevated trains of the BMT from Brooklyn points to a terminal at Park Row via Sands Street. Streetcars ran on what are now the two center lanes (shared with other traffic) until the elevated lines stopped using the bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center tracks. In 1950 the streetcars also stopped running, and the bridge was rebuilt to carry six lanes of automobile traffic. Early life

As a young boy Roebling enjoyed music such as playing the flute and the piano. He enjoyed listening to the melodies of Bach and poetry of Goethe. Roebling also had great artistic talent as portrayed in many of his paintings. He built a model bridge at the age of nine and later this bridge was noticed to be similar to the Brooklyn Bridge. Roebling grew up in a time where the older students put on uniforms, shouldered muskets, and marched off to stop Napoleon and his army. John grew up in the city of Mühlhausen where the design of his bridges can be seen in the architecture of the city. The Gothic architecture of Mühlhausen can be seen as the root of John's "innate feeling for the beautiful and the enduring in construction."

Education

John attended the public schools of Gymnasium in Mühlhausen (at the age of 14 John passed the examination for the title of Master Builder or "Baumeister"), Realschule in Erfurt. Recognizing his intelligence at a young age, Roebling's mother, Friederike Dorothea Roebling secured enrollment for him at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin where he studied architecture and engineering under Rabe and Sluter, bridge construction and foundation construction under Dietleyn, hydraulics under Eytelwein, languages, and philosophy, graduating in 1826 with a degree in Civil Engineering. Additionally, Roebling studied under famous German philosopher Georg Hegel. Roebling became Hegel's protege, and completed a 2000 page treatise on his concept of the universe. After working for 3 years on government road-building projects, he became dissatisfied with his life and opportunities in Germany.

Fleeing Europe

On May 22, 1831, Roebling left Germany with his brother Karl and 40 friends and acquaintances. He wanted to build big bridges, which was difficult in Germany at the time. Economic mobility and career advancement were very difficult in Prussian society. This unfortunate state of affairs had been brought about by the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted until 1815. This period in European history left Prussia with a great deal of political unrest, as authoritarian governments traded places with democratic ones. John and Karl, along with the people who accompanied them on the trans-Atlantic journey, purchased 1582 acres (6.4 km²) of land on October 28, 1831, in Butler County, Pennsylvania[and established a settlement, called Saxonburg.

Career

Unsuccessful as a farmer in western Pennsylvania, Roebling returned to engineering in 1837 (after the death of his brother and the birth of his first child ) and was employed by the state of Pennsylvania on various canal and railroad projects. John Roebling could not have arrived in the United States at a better time. One year prior to his arrival, President Andrew Jackson had authorized the use of nearly $100 million toward public engineering projects, including the construction of roads, railroads, and canals. A dominant mode of thought in America at the time was manifest destiny and the opening up of the West, and so transportation between eastern industrial hubs and frontier markets had become a matter of both national and popular interest.

After five years he married Johanna Herting Roebling, a tailor's daughter, and had nine children with her over the next decade.

• Son: Washington A. Roebling (b. 1837, d. 1926) • Daughter: Laura R. Methfessel (b. 1840, d. 1873) • Son: Ferdinand W. Roebling (b. 1842, d. 1917) • Daughter: Elvira R. Stewart (b. 1844, d. 1871) • Daughter: Josephine R. Jarvis (b. 1847) • Son: Charles Gustavus Roebling (b. 9-Dec-1849, d. 1918) • Son: Edmund Roebling (b. 1854, d. 1930) • Son: William Roebling (b. 1856, d. 1860) • Daughter: Hannah Roebling (died in infancy)

Roebling's first engineering work in America was devoted to improving river navigation and canal building. He spent three years surveying for railway lines across the Allegheny Mountains, from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, for the state of Pennsylvania. In 1840, he wrote to suspension bridge designer Charles Ellet, Jr., offering to help with the design of a bridge near Philadelphia:

The study of suspension bridges formed for the last few years of my residence in Europe my favourite occupation ... Let but a single bridge of the kind be put up in Philadelphia, exhibiting all the beautiful forms of the system to full advantage, and it needs no prophecy to foretell the effect which the novel and useful features will produce upon the intelligent minds of the Americans.

Roebling's house in Saxonburg, adjacent to a replica of the Brooklyn Bridge

In 1841, at his workshop in Saxonburg, he began producing wire rope. During this time, canal boats from Philadelphia had to be towed up and over the Allegheny Mountains on railroad cars to access waterways on the other side of the mountains so the boats could travel on to Pittsburgh. The system of inclines and levels that pulled the boats supported by railroad cars was called the Allegheny Portage Railroad. These railroad cars were pulled up the inclines by hemp rope up to nine inches thick. This rope eventually wore out, and as Roebling was watching a crew pull a boat up a hill one day, the rope snapped and sent the boat to the bottom of the mountain. Roebling then remembered an article he read in a German magazine about wire rope. Soon after, he started developing wire rope, which consists of strands of wire wound around an inner core to produce a tightly strung strand of cable. He started the Roebling and Sons Company which mass produced wire rope. This wire rope was used in all of the suspension bridges that he designed. He had been fascinated with the idea of suspension bridges since his college days, and wrote his graduation thesis on the subject.

In 1844, Roebling won a bid to replace the wooden canal aqueduct across the Allegheny River. His design encompassed seven spans of 163 feet, each consisting of a wooden trunk to hold the water supported by a continuous wire cable on each side. That the design was successful was especially satisfying since a number of professional engineers had scoffed at the notion of a suspension aqueduct.

This was followed in 1845 by building a suspension bridge over the Monongahela River at Pittsburgh. In 1848, Roebling undertook the construction of four suspension aqueducts on the Delaware and Hudson Canal. During this period, he moved to Trenton, New Jersey.

Roebling's next project, starting in 1851, was a railroad bridge connecting the New York Central and Great Western Railway of Canada over the Niagara River, which would take four years. The bridge, with a clear span of 825 feet, is supported by four, ten-inch wire cables, and has two levels, one for vehicles and one for rail traffic.

While the Niagara bridge was being built, Roebling undertook another railway suspension bridge, across the Kentucky River on the Southern Railroad from Cincinnati to Chattanooga, which required a clear span of 1,224 feet. The anchorage and stone towers were completed, and the cable wire delivered along with the material for the superstructure, when the railway company collapsed: the bridge was left uncompleted.

The Roebling Suspension Bridge, spanning the Ohio River at Cincinnati. In 1858, Roebling started another suspension bridge at Pittsburgh, this one of 1,030 feet, divided into two spans of 344 feet each, and two side spans of 171 feet each.

The outbreak of the American Civil War brought a temporary halt to Roebling's work. But during the war, in 1863, building resumed on a bridge over the Ohio River at Cincinnati which he had started in 1856 that was stopped due to financing difficulties; the bridge was finished in 1867. The Cincinnati-Covington Bridge, later named after him John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, would be the world's longest suspension bridge until completion of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Roebling came up with, “an equilibrium strength approach, in which equilibrium is always satisfied but compatibility of deformations is not enforced.” This was essentially an approximation method similar to the force method. First, Roebling found the dead and live loads. Roebling then divided the load between the cables and the stays. Roebling added a large safety factor to the divided loads and then solved for the forces. This approach gave a sufficiently accurate analysis of the structure given the assumption that the structure was ductile enough to handle such deformation.

Projects

German stamp of 2006 commemorating Roebling

Roebling Suspension Bridges 1844 - 1952 John A. Roebling 1844 Allegheny Aqueduct Bridge Pittsburgh, Pa. 162' spans 1846 Smithfield Bridge Pittsburgh, Pa. 188' spans 1848 Lackawaxen Aqueduct Bridge Northeast Pennsylvania 120' spans 1848 Delaware Aqueduct Bridge Northeast Pennsylvania 134' spans 1850 High Falls Aqueduct Bridge Southeast New York 145' spans 1850 Neversink Aqueduct Bridge Southeast New York 1854 Niagara River Bridge New York-Canada 821' span 1859 Allegheny Bridge Pittsburgh, Pa. 344' spans 1867 Cincinnati-Covington Bridge Ohio- Kentucky 1056' span 1883 Brooklyn Bridge NYC-Brooklyn, N.Y. 1595' span (Designed by John A. Roebling built by Washington A. Roebling) John A. Roebling Son's Company 1903 Williamsburg Bridge NYC-Brooklyn, N.Y. 1600' span 1909 Manhattan Bridge NYC-Brooklyn, N.Y. 1470' span 1916 Parkersburg Bridge West Virginia-Ohio 775' span 1922 Roundout Creek Bridge N.Y. State 705' span 1924 Bear Mountain Bridge N.Y. State{Hudson River} 1632' span 1931 Maysville Bridge Kentucky-Ohio 1060' span 1931 Maumee River Bridge Northwest Ohio 785' span 1931 St. John's Bridge Portland, Oregon 1207' span 1931 Grand Mere Bridge Canada 1207' span 1931 Dome Bridge Arizona 802' span 1932 George Washington Bridge New York-New Jersey 3500' span 1933 San Rafael Bridge California 451' span 1937 Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California 4200' span 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge Tacoma, Washington 2800' span 1943 Peace River Bridge Alcan Highway Canada 2000' span 1947 Adams Suwanee River Bridge Northern Florida 1952 San Marcos Bridge San Salvador, El Salvador