The Brooklyn Bridge is a landmark and one of the greatest everlasting achievements in the history of New York. Its grand opening was on May 24th, 1883 which proudly marks the date this majestic landmark was added to Brooklyn’s line of great historic monuments. But as swell as the Brooklyn Bridge is there a negative portion that follows unfortunately. Its actually quite easily to overlook these events for the worse because in a city like New York what bad could go awfully wrong or unexpected. There are multiple accounts that support this claim such as the rumors that caused the stampede on May 30th, 1883 six days after the grand opening also known as the Stampede of 1883 and other events that include people committing suicide and the death of John A. Roebling the architect who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. These accounts share similarities and differences which will be discussed
On May 24th, 1883 the grand opening ceremony for the Brooklyn Bridge was celebrated, no one would have guessed that not even a week but six days later a great tragedy had occurred on the bridge. There were rumors that claimed the bridge wasn’t steady and it was going to collapse, when word got around people rushed to get off the bridge, trampling on those who unfortunately fell during their attempted escape. The stampede left 12 people trampled to death and 36 were left injured. After the stampede a circus owner who went by the name P.T. Barnum decided to publicize his circus by proving that the bridge was more than just safe and the rumors were just rumors. At first when the Bridge first opened his circus was denied access but after the stampede state officials reluctantly agreed to P.T.Barnum’s offer. P.T. Barnum’s circus: “Jumbo” which consisted of 21 elephants which is approximately 42 tons (84,000 pounds) crossed the bridge and rid the rumors for good. The stampede could have been prevented if the state officials decided to test the stability of the bridge before allowing the people of New York to cross.
During the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge a list of deaths followed one of the most important was the architect himself, John A. Roebling at the time who was taking observations to determine the exact location of the Brooklyn Tower his assistant Colonel William H. Paine was stationed in a transit to deliver the line across to Roebling who was standing on a pile of wood, A ferry was approaching and Colonel was too focused on giving directions to Roebling that the ferry including its passengers crashed heavily into the fender, the fender was forced against the cluster and Roebling’s foot was crushed between the timbers. John A. Roebling who had his toes on the right foot amputated but contracted Tetanus disease and died two weeks later after his death, Roebling’s son took over to complete what his father started, He made several important improvements on the bridge design and further developed bridge building techniques. Thus, he designed the two large pneumatic caissons that became the foundations for the two towers. In 1870, fire broke out in one of the caissons; from within the caisson, Roebling directed his attention extinguish the flames. Working in compressed air in these caissons under the river caused him to get decompression sickness which hindered his health enough to prevent him to visit the construction site. His wife, Emily Warren Roebling, who had taken it upon herself to learn bridge construction, became his nurse and confidant and took over much of the chief engineer’s duties including day-to-day supervision and project management. Another heartbreaking story involves the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, Robert Odlum in May 1885. His motivations for doing so included the desire to demonstrate that people did not die simply from falling through the air, thus encouraging people to be willing to jump from a burning building into a net. Odlum also desired fame and the chance to help himself and his mother financially. All these accounts relating to death not only saddened New Yorkers but also forced us to rethink our guidelines of safety and how to prevent these events from ever happening again.
After explaining the two accounts to promote my claims, Should we start with the discussion of the similarities of the accounts. These accounts are surrounded by death and sorrow as the lives of innocent people were lost. All the events that were listed above are considered an unexpected twist of events, the stampede that occurred after 6 days due to rumors and the architect himself dying in the field of work, who would’ve guessed? Another similarity is that both these events happened because of human error, People should pay attention to their surroundings and to not get way TOO sucked into and getting “blinded” by this one goal that they are work so hard to achieve. As far as similarities go, there are also some differences between the two accounts that are worth mentioning such as how Roeblings successors, his son Washington Roebling also died due to a disease he contracted from working in the construction site likewise his father, while P.T. Barnum’s attempt to publicize his circus not only got the job done but prevented any more deaths and false claims about the stability of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Finally, the two accounts that I’ve explained have indeed have supported the fact that the Brooklyn Bridge is not all fun and games when we research more in depth about its history, Now these two accounts have ended in different, In P.T. Barnum’s situation he is considered as a hero because of his actions, he made a huge gamble in order to publicize his circus and doing his City a favor to eradicate the fear in the hearts of New Yorkers and to persuade them to trust the Brooklyn Bridge once more while on the other hand Washington Roebling died to the same reason his father did which was being blinded by his work in the site which resulted into getting extremely injured. Its history consists of events that bring out the bridges true colors which are still so easily disregarded by the thousands of people who crossed the bridge because everyone is so blinded by their daily routine, who has time for anything?
Works Cited
“John Augustus Roebling (American Engineer).” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.
Wikipedia. “Washington Roebling.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2013. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.
Stern, John, and Carrie Wilson. “THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE: A STUDY IN GREATNESS.” (n.d.): n. pag. Print.
CBS Team. “Brookiyn Bridge – Creating Grandeur.” CBSForum.com. CBS Team, 2 May 2003. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.
“Today in History.” : June 12. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
