Discuss & Recall The Storied Past of the Brooklyn Bridge Among the most iconic structures in the United States, the Brooklyn Bridge, which links the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, serves as both a majestic sight and a vital passage over the East River. But the story of the bridge’s construction in the late 1800s is even more compelling than the inspiring structure itself. This discussion activity features the storied past of the Brooklyn Bridge, lists of surprising and fast facts, and some Trivia Q & A. Preparation & How-To’s • Read the informational portions of the activity and use the Discussion Starters to help get a conversation going. • Print the pictures to share or display them on the TV screen. • Check out the Additional Activities section for more information to bring to the activity. • Set the mood for this activity by playing Frank Sinatra’s “The Brooklyn Bridge” from the movie It Happened in Brooklyn (1947). The Storied Past of the Brooklyn Bridge Introduction Songs celebrate it. Photographs and paintings immortalize it. Poetry romanticizes it. And a woman who never held a degree in architecture or engineering saved it when the death of the chief engineer and the subsequent debilitating illness of his replacement put the entire project in jeopardy. It was 1855 when the bridge was first proposed, but by then, plans for crossing the river to connect Brooklyn and Manhattan had been discussed for half a century. Manhattan had a population that doubled that of Brooklyn in the early 1800s, and city planners sought a way to relieve overcrowding while promoting development in Brooklyn. Bringing a vision for the bridge to fruition would be a daunting task, fraught with peril and tainted by corrupt politicians. But today, it stands as one of the most extraordinary architectural feats of its time and an enduring American landmark. The Brooklyn Bridge, with its stately gothic towers and thick, steel cables spanning 1,600 feet between them, is a striking vision. It is perhaps the most recognizable feature of the New York City skyline—a gateway to that “shining city,” as novelist Thomas Wolfe once described it. The structure is so integral an element of the cityscape, it’s hard to imagine that it almost didn’t happen. Construction of the bridge began in 1869. Its completion required 14 years and the survival of some near-fatal challenges along the way. ©ActivityConnection.com – The Storied Past of the Brooklyn Bridge – Page 1 of 6 A Stumbling Start The bridge’s story begins with a fatality before construction even commenced. The visionary German-born engineer who’d designed it, John Augustus Roebling, was a great pioneer in the design of steel suspension bridges and had touted his proposed project as the “greatest bridge in existence.” But during a final site survey at the location of a bridge tower, a docking boat delivered a crushing injury to his foot. The injury led to amputation and then tetanus. He died within a month. His son, Washington A. Roebling, a civil engineer, had married three years earlier and had taken his bride to Europe, where he’d engaged in further study of bridge construction. His focus of study was caissons, the watertight structures filled with compressed air, allowing underwater excavation. When his father died, Washington Roebling took over as chief engineer on the bridge project, but his tenure in this post was destined for ill fate as well. In 1870, when a fire broke out in one of the bridge’s caissons, he personally supervised firefighting efforts, entering and exiting the pressurized chambers repeatedly. It resulted in decompression sickness that left him partially paralyzed, blind, deaf, mute, and bedridden with ongoing secondary complications. His recovery was uncertain, and the bridge project was suddenly endangered. Emily Warren Roebling to the Rescue Five years earlier, Washington Roebling had wed Emily Warren, an intelligent young woman who was keenly interested in higher education and frustrated by the cultural norms of her time that hindered such pursuits by women. She enlisted her older brother in a persuasion campaign to convince her parents to send her to college, and with his help, they acquiesced. She enrolled in the prestigious Georgetown Academy of the Visitation in Washington, D.C., where she studied a wide variety of subjects including French, history, algebra, astronomy, housekeeping, and needlework. However, it was not the level of education afforded to men like her husband and father-in-law. Yet, while she had little formal training in architecture or engineering, fate would later grant her an opportunity to command a leadership role in the completion of a suspension bridge. As her husband lay struggling to recover from his illness, Emily Roebling became his eyes, his ears, and his voice. Through her, the chief engineer was able to realize his vision while physically incapacitated. She began with carrying out secretarial functions, taking notes at his bedside and getting them into the hands of assistant engineers at the construction site. From there, she relayed information back to her husband and kept communications going between the chief engineer and the site team. She also negotiated supply contracts, resolved disputes among competing contractors, and fulfilled the role of liaison to the board of trustees. Emily Roebling emerged from this process with a highly developed flair for diplomacy, as she deftly defended her husband’s role as chief engineer when politicians endeavored to remove him. In the final years of the bridge’s construction, Washington Roebling watched through the window at his bedside in Brooklyn Heights. Through binoculars and a telescope, he looked on as the bridge took shape and grew. He didn’t need a magnifying aid, though, to proudly watch his wife grow into the role of surrogate chief engineer. After 14 years, the Brooklyn Bridge was complete. The first person to cross it was Emily Roebling. She rode across in a carriage cradling a rooster in her arms to symbolize victory. The bridge opened officially on May 24, 1883, to triumphant fanfare, complete with cannon fire and bursting fireworks for the attending crowds. ©ActivityConnection.com – The Storied Past of the Brooklyn Bridge – Page 2 of 6 In remarks during the opening ceremonies, U.S. Congressman Abram Stevens Hewitt said, “The name of Emily Warren Roebling will… be inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature and all that is wonderful in the constructive world of art,” adding that the Brooklyn Bridge would be “an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.” Emily Roebling spent the years following the bridge project in devotion to several women’s causes and wrote an award-winning essay entitled “A Wife’s Disabilities.” The essay took aim at the many laws of that time that discriminated against and marginalized women. She went on to travel widely and finally fulfilled her dream of pursuing a more serious higher education. In 1899, she received a law certificate from New York University. Discussion Starters • Have you seen or crossed the Brooklyn Bridge? • Do you agree that it is worthy of being the most photographed place in the U.S.? • Were you aware that the chief engineer’s wife spent more than a decade overseeing the completion of the bridge? Does this surprise you? • Do you have any favorite bridges? Where on your list does the Brooklyn Bridge rank? • Are you aware of the many perils faced during the construction of this bridge? Setbacks and Stories of Peril “To every human undertaking, there seems of necessity to be a dark side.” ~ Brooklyn Eagle, May 24,1883 On the very day the bridge officially opened, this Brooklyn newspaper published a reminder of the high price paid by many laborers to deliver safe passage across the East River. Here are some of the setbacks and sacrifices suffered during the bridge’s construction. John A. Roebling was the first casualty of the Brooklyn Bridge project, but there were many to follow. Accounts of the death toll during construction vary, with at least 21 killed and estimates as high as 40. The first fatalities occurred on October 23, 1871, after the collapse of a pair of derricks used to haul granite blocks to the top of the bridge tower on the Brooklyn side. Four men were killed—one of them from a fall while attempting to leap to safety. While Washington Roebling survived his decompression illness, three other bridge workers did not. Roebling went into the caissons to battle a fire, but workers called “sandhogs” toiled in them daily with shovels and even dynamite to excavate the riverbed for foundation construction. As they dug deeper, many began to develop alarming symptoms upon resurfacing, including slurred speech, vomiting, muscular paralysis, chills, agonizing joint pain, and stomach cramps. In the spring of 1872, three immigrant workers died after developing these symptoms. It was not known at the time, but this “caisson disease” was caused by bubbling nitrogen in the bloodstream brought on by rapid decreases in atmospheric pressure when resurfacing too quickly. Due to this rash of caisson-related deaths, Washington Roebling suspended digging for the Manhattan tower and made the decision to stop short of reaching bedrock, fearing it could lead to 100 more fatalities. ©ActivityConnection.com – The Storied Past of the Brooklyn Bridge – Page 3 of 6 In addition, multiple men fell to their deaths during the construction of the two bridge towers. Working at dizzying heights of more than 275 feet above the river’s surface, several laborers experienced mishaps that sent them plummeting to their demise.