The Brooklyn Bridge, One of the most famous landmarks of New York. It extends for 5,989 feet and it is one of the best things in New York. It was the reason why New York became what it is today. The Bridges construction started in 1869 by the man called John Augustus Roebling. It was completed on May 24 1883 and the first day estimate of 250,000 people walked across on the bridge promenade. The bridge connected the two major boroughs of New York City today, the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Bridge was completed but do people today wonder how the construction must have felt like or the how John Augustus Roebling managed to do this. Well that is what I will tell you guys today how the Brooklyn Bridge was built, who built it and how it has helped New York City.
The man who thought of he Bridge is John Augustus Roebling. He was a great pioneer in the design of steel suspension bridges. He was born in Germany in 1806 and migrated to Pennsylvania and tried to be a farmer but could not be successful so he moved to the capital Harrisburg, where he found work as a civil engineer. He promoted the use of wire cable and established a successful wire-cable factory. While working he earned a reputation as a designer of suspension bridges, which at the time were widely used but known to fail under strong winds or heavy loads. However Roebling found a solution, a web truss added to either side of the bridge roadway that greatly stabilized the structure. Roebling slowly made his name and with help of this technology he successfully bridged the Niagara Gorge at Niagara Falls, New York, and the Ohio River in Cincinnati, Ohio. Than in 1867 the legislature approved to of a bridge over the east river of Manhattan and Brooklyn that was proposed to them by Roebling who was popular at that time due to his achievements in making bridges. However when John was inspecting the site he hurt himself and 17 days later he passed away. Than his son Washington A. Roebling, took over as chief engineer. Roebling had worked with his father on several bridges and had helped design the Brooklyn Bridge.
The master mind was not there but his plans were there through his son Washington A. Roebling. He took over and started the construction of the bridge which was going to create history. The biggest challenge of the construction was how it will be held together? How will it be strong enough to hold a bridge that big? Well the answer was the inventive idea of John Roebling to use steel instead of iron. The other problem was digging of the foundation but the idea of caisson work solved the problem. Caissons, enormous wooden boxes with no bottoms, were sunk in the river. Compressed air was pumped into them, and men inside would dig away at the sand and rock on the river bottom. The stone towers were built atop the caissons, which sank deeper into the river bottom. Now the caissons work was tough and risky and the people that took this risk were called the”sandhogs”. These workers were mostly immigrants that earned abut $2 a day. They used shovels and dynamite to clear away the mud and boulders at the bottom of the river. Each week, the caissons inched closer to the bedrock. When they reached a sufficient depth of44 feet on the Brooklyn side and 78 feet on the Manhattan side they began laying granite, working their way back up to the surface. How ever the conditions in the caissons were not good and it led to illness and this also affected the brain of this bridge, Washington A. Roebling. He was paralyzed and his wife Emily Roebling took over and helped her husband complete the bride.
When the foundation was completed the other big task was the cables. Spinning the cables was as a big thing since I was no easy thing to cover the whole bridge with cables. The spinning cable began in the summer of 1877 and was finished after a year and four months. However it took another five years to suspend the roadway from the cables and have the bridge ready for traffic. Finally after all the hard work the bridge was completed in 14 years and on May 24, 1883 the bridge was opened to the public. The Bridge cost $15 million double than what John A .Roebling had expected.
The Bridge took a lot of money and man power to build it but how did the bridge help New York? Well it basically turned New York City into what is it is today. It turned New York City into the most important commercial metropolis in the United States. It connected the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The bridge increased the population of Brooklyn from 580,000 to one million in the first 15 years opened and solved the problem of lack of house on the small island of Manhattan. The bridge also helped it economically. The Brooklyn Bridge created one of the largest economic centers in the world by facilitating the safe transportation of goods and labor between these two metropolitan areas. Now people can easily live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan. At 276.5 feet over high water, the bridge also allows the large commercial ships underneath the bridge.
The Brooklyn Bridge is the symbol of New York City. It is a national monument of New York and it has helped make this city what it is today. The idea of John A. Roebling and the hard work put in from his son and daughter in law Washington a. Roebling and Emily Roebling connected Brooklyn and Manhattan and changed the course of history of New York City. Imagine what the bridge was not built than we would have never experienced the success New York has seen. It helped us in many ways and we should remember all the hard work, the mind used for this and all the money used to build this great landmark, The Brooklyn Bridge.
Reference List
1-“Brooklyn Bridge.” 2013. The History Channel website. Dec 1 2013, 4:20 http://www.history.com/topics/brooklyn-bridge.
2-Economic Effect – The Brooklyn Bridge: A World Wonder.”Economic Effect -The Brooklyn Bridge: A World Wonder. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. <http://www.brooklynbridgeaworldwonder.com/economic-effect.html>.
3-“Building the Brooklyn Bridge.” About.com 19th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013. <http://history1800s.about.com/od/bridgebuilding/a/brooklynbrid01.htm>.
4-“Brooklyn Bridge.” , New York City. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013. <http://www.aviewoncities.com/nyc/brooklynbridge.htm>.
