Everything about The Brooklyn Bridge totally explained
The
Brooklyn Bridge, one of the oldest
suspension bridges in the
United States, stretches 5,989 feet (1825 m) over the
East River connecting the
New York City boroughs of
Manhattan and
Brooklyn. On completion, it was the
largest suspension bridge in the world and the first steel-wire suspension bridge. Originally referred to as the
New York and Brooklyn Bridge, it was dubbed the
Brooklyn Bridge in an 1867 letter to the editor of the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York
skyline. In 1964 it was designated a
National Historic Landmark.
History and events
Construction
Construction began
January 3,
1870. The Brooklyn Bridge was completed thirteen years later and was opened for use on
May 24,
1883. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed. 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.
One week after the opening, on
May 30, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede which crushed and killed twelve people..
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. Additionally, 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
Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers.
The bridge was designed by
German-born
John Augustus Roebling in
Trenton, New Jersey. Roebling had earlier designed and constructed other suspension bridges, such as
Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in
Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, the
John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in
Cincinnati, Ohio and the
Waco Suspension Bridge in
Waco, Texas, that served as the engineering prototypes for the final design.
During surveying for the East River Bridge project, Roebling's foot was badly injured by a ferry, pinning it against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of
tetanus. His son,
Washington, succeeded him, but in 1872 was stricken with
caisson disease (
decompression sickness, commonly known as "the bends"), due to working in compressed air in caissons. The occurrence of the disease in the caisson workers caused him to halt construction of the Manhattan side of the tower 30 feet (10 m) short of bedrock when soil tests underneath the caisson found bedrock to be even deeper than expected. Today, the Manhattan tower rests only on sand. Washington's wife,
Emily Warren Roebling, became his aide, learning engineering and communicating his wishes to the on-site assistants. When the bridge opened, she was the first person to cross it. Washington Roebling rarely visited the site again.
At the time the bridge was built, the
aerodynamics of bridge building hadn't been worked out. Bridges were not tested in
wind tunnels until the 1950s — well after the collapse of the
Tacoma Narrows Bridge 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.
After the collapse of the
I-35W highway bridge in the city of Minneapolis, increased public attention has been brought to bear on the condition of bridges across the US, and it has been reported that the Brooklyn Bridge approach ramps received a rating of "poor" at its last inspection . According to a NYC Department of Transportation spokesman, "The poor rating it received doesn't mean it's unsafe. Poor means there are some components that have to be rehabilitated.” A $725 million project to replace the approaches and repaint the bridge is scheduled to begin in 2009.
Later 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.
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.
1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting
On
March 1,
1994, Lebanese-born
Rashid Baz opened fire on a van carrying members of the
Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking 16 year old student
Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the bridge. Halberstam died five days later from his wounds. Baz was apparently acting out of revenge for the
Hebron massacre of 29 Muslims by
Baruch Goldstein that had taken place days earlier on
February 25,
1994. Baz was convicted of murder and sentenced to a 141 year prison term. After initially classifying the murder as one committed out of
road rage, the
FBI reclassified the case in 2000 as a terrorist attack. The entrance ramp to the bridge on the Manhattan side was named the Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp in memory of the victim.
2003 Plot
In 2003, truck driver
Iyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support to
al-Qaeda, after an earlier plot to destroy the bridge by cutting through its support wires with
blowtorches was cancelled.
2006 bunker discovery
In 2006, a
Cold War era bunker was found by city workers near the East River shoreline of Manhattan's Lower East Side. The bunker, hidden within one of the masonry towers, still contains the emergency supplies that were being stored for a potential nuclear attack by the
Soviet Union.
125th Anniversary celebrations
On May 24, 2008, festivities are held over the entire
Memorial Day week-end to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Trivia
Pedestrian access
The Brooklyn Bridge is accessible from the Brooklyn entrances of Tillary/Adams Streets, Sands/Pearl Streets, and Exit 28B of the eastbound
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In Manhattan, motor cars can enter from either direction of the
FDR Drive,
Park Row, Chambers/Centre Streets, and Pearl/Frankfort Streets. Pedestrian access to the bridge from the Brooklyn side is from either Tillary/Adams Streets (in between the auto entrance/exit), or a staircase on Prospect St between Cadman Plaza East and West. In Manhattan, the pedestrian walkway is accessible from the end of Centre Street, or through the unpaid south staircase of
Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall IRT subway station.
The Brooklyn Bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway open to walkers and cyclists, in the center of the bridge and higher than the automobile lanes. While the bridge has always permitted the passage of pedestrians across its span, its role in allowing thousands to cross takes on a special importance in times of difficulty when usual means of crossing the East River have become unavailable.
During transit
strikes by the
Transport Workers Union in 1980 and 2005 the bridge was used by people commuting to work, with Mayors
Koch and
Bloomberg crossing the bridge as a gesture to the affected public.
Following the
1965,
1977 and
2003 Blackouts and most famously after the
September 11, 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center, the bridge was used by people in Manhattan to leave the city after subway service was suspended. The massive numbers of people on the bridge couldn't have been anticipated by the original designer, yet John Roebling designed it with three separate systems managing even unanticipated structural stresses. The bridge has a suspension system, a diagonal stay system, and a stiffening truss. "Roebling himself famously said if anything happens to one of [his] systems, 'The bridge may sag, but it won't fall.'" The movement of large numbers of people on a bridge creates pedestrian oscillations or "sway" as the crowd lifts one foot after another, some falling inevitably in synchronized cadences. The natural sway motion of people walking causes small sideways oscillations in a bridge, which in turn cause people on the bridge to sway in step, increasing the amplitude of the bridge oscillations and continually reinforcing the effect. This high-density traffic causes a bridge to appear to move erratically or "to wobble" as happened at opening of the
London Millennium Footbridge in 2000.
Cultural significance
Contemporaries marveled at what technology was capable of and the bridge became a symbol of the optimism of the time.
John Perry Barlow wrote in the late 20th century of the "literal and genuinely religious leap of faith" embodied in the Brooklyn Bridge … the Brooklyn Bridge required of its builders faith in their ability to control technology."
References to "selling the Brooklyn Bridge" abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. For example, "If you believe
that, I've a wonderful bargain for you…" References are often nowadays more oblique, such as "I could sell you some lovely riverside property in Brooklyn ... ".
George C. Parker and
William McCloundy are two early 20th-century con-men who had (allegedly) successfully perpetrated this scam on unwitting tourists.
(External Link
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In his second book
The Bridge,
Hart Crane begins with a poem entitled "Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge." The bridge was a source of inspiration for Crane and he owned different apartments specifically to have different views of the bridge.
In the 1972 film,
The Hot Rock, the Brooklyn Bridge was shown as a visual icon of New York City. The partially-finished
World Trade Center was also shown. In the years between 1972 and 2001, the WTC became the icon of choice for New York City, and use of the Brooklyn Bridge fell. Since 2001, the Brooklyn Bridge has been restored to its status of "If you see the Brooklyn Bridge, you know you're looking at New York City."
Panoramas
Gallery
Image:Brooklynbridge-1874.png|Brooklyn Bridge, also known as the East River Bridge, seen from Manhattan, as drawn (and woodcut) in a Swedish monthly magazine in August 1874.
Image:Brooklyn Bridge New York City 1899 Pedestrian Crossing.jpg| On the promenade, Brooklyn Bridge, New York c.1899
Image:February 23rd 1908 Boys Selling Newspapers on Brooklyn Bridge.jpg|Newsboys selling on Brooklyn Bridge c.1908
Image:NYEastRiver From WTC.jpg|A World Trade Center view of the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and the East river.
Image:Brooklyn-Bridge-Mural.jpg|Mural of Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, with the real thing in background. (picture taken 1981).
Image:LOC Brooklyn Bridge and East River 8.png|Brooklyn Bridge and Ferrybank Restaurant
Image:Brooklyn Bridge 2004-01-11.jpg
Image:Brooklyn Bridge at Dusk.jpg|Brooklyn Bridge at Dusk
Further Information
Get more info on 'Brooklyn Bridge'.
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