January 24, 2024 • 40 mins
Emily Warren Roebling played a crucial role in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband became disabled. It’s a story of an engineering marvel and what mainstream U.S. society expected of women and disabled people in the 19th century.
Research:
- American Monthly Magazine. “Mrs. Washington A. Roebling.” Daughters of the American Revolution. 1892. https://archive.org/details/americanmonthlymv17daug/
- Ashworth, William B. Jr. “Emily Warren Roebling.” Linda Hall Library. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/emily-warren-roebling/
- Bennett, Jessica. “Emily Warren Roebling.” New York Times. 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-emily-warren-roebling.html
- Bowery Boys. “PODCAST: The Brooklyn Bridge.” 1/11/2008. https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2008/01/brooklyn-bridge.html
- Brady, Sean. “The Brooklyn Bridge: Tragedy Overcome (Part 1).” The Structural Engineer. March 2015.
- Brady, Sean. “The Brooklyn Bridge: Tragedy Overcome (Part 2).” The Structural Engineer. April 2015.
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Emily Warren Roebling". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Dec. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Warren-Roebling. Accessed 9 January 2024.
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Washington Augustus Roebling". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Jul. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Washington-Augustus-Roebling. Accessed 9 January 2024.
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “Mrs. Washington A. Roebling.” 3/1/1903. https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/53405737/
- “Col. W.A. Roebling.” The Brooklyn Union. 5/16/1883. https://www.newspapers.com/image/541841261/
- “Cost of Marrying a Foreigner.” The Buffalo Review. 8/27/1889. https://www.newspapers.com/image/354435395/
- “Danger In It.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 10/1/1889. https://www.newspapers.com/image/50407904/
- "Emily Roebling." Notable Women Scientists, Gale, 2000. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1668000367/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=0de2e1e2. Accessed 18 Dec. 2023.
- Flagg, Thomas R. "Brooklyn Bridge." Encyclopedia of New York State, edited by Peter R. Eisenstadt and Laura-Eve Moss, Syracuse UP, 2005, p. 223. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A194195370/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=a49d8b0e. Accessed 18 Dec. 2023.
- Hewitt, Abram S. “Oration. From: Opening ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn bridge, May 24, 1883. Press of the Brooklyn Job Printing Department. 1883. https://archive.org/details/openingceremoni00bridgoog
- “In the Dark.” The Brooklyn Union. 7/11/1882. https://www.newspapers.com/image/541767454/
- “John Roebling Ferry Accident.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 6/30/1869. https://www.newspapers.com/image/60752419/
- Juravich, Nick. “Emily Warren Roebling: Building the Brooklyn Bridge and Beyond.” New York Historical Society. 5/30/2018. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/emily-warren-roebling-beyond-the-bridge
- Library of Congress. “Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge.” https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-12/
- “Mrs. Roebling Dead.” New-york Tribune. 3/1/1903. https://www.newspapers.com/image/467730770/
- New York Historical Society. “Life Story: Emily Warren Roebling (1843–1903).” Women & the American Story. https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/labor-and-industry/emily-warren-roebling/
- Petrash, Antonia. “More than petticoats. Remarkable New York women.” 2002.
- “Battling Tetanus.” https://www.si.edu/spotlight/antibody-initiative/battling-tetanus
- Tiwari, Tejpratap S.P. et al. “Tetanus.” Centers for Disease Control. 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/tetanus.htm
- “With Women Lawyers.” The Woman's Journal 1899-04-08: Vol 30 Iss 14. https://archive.org/details/sim_the-womans-journal_1899-04-08_30_14/page/109/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm tra
CV Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We got lots of requests for an episode on Emily
Warren Robling thanks to the TV show The Gilded Age.
I have not watched this television show at all. One
pu there's too much TV to watch, and I just haven't.
I did sit down after getting these requests and I
was like, I'm gonna watch the first episode and I
(00:38):
don't remember what the runtime on the first episode was,
but it was more minutes than I had and I
was like, maybe later, and I just I haven't watched it.
According to IMDb, though Emily Warren Robling is played by
Liz Wisen in episodes five and seven of the second season,
that second season has ended now, so hopefully for folks
(01:00):
are still interested in this episode, Emily Warren Robling played
a crucial role in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
This was not near as much of a secret as
most recent descriptions of all this make it sound like
there's this tone of like and no one knew she
was involved at all until just now not the case.
(01:21):
It was, however, highly unusual for a woman to have
this kind of role in a major engineering project at
the time. This was a role she stepped into after
her husband became disabled. So this is a story of
an engineering marvel and also a story about what mainstream
(01:42):
US society expected of women and of disabled people in
the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Emily Warren was born on September twenty third, eighteen forty three,
in Cold Spring, New York. She was the eleventh of
twelve children born to Sylvanas and Phoebe Lickley Warren. Although
only of those siblings survived childhood, their family was comfortable
but not really wealthy, and they were prominent in their community.
Emily's father held a number of elected roles in the
(02:10):
state and local government, and he was also friends with
previous podcast subject Washington Irving.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I saw one description of the family that was like
they weren't rich by Hudson River Valley standards.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I was like, would they have been rich somewhere else?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
In eighteen fifty eight, Emily started studying at Georgetown Academy
of the Visitation. This was a Catholic school for girls
established in Washington, d c. In seventeen ninety nine. The
course of study included subjects like algebra, geometry, the sciences, languages,
and music, and students sat for public exams every year.
(02:46):
While Emily was enrolled there. The school subsidized its costs
of operations by selling enslaved people and by hiring out
their labor. The people who were enslaved at the school
or were collectively owned by the religious order that ran
the school, were emancipated under the District of Columbia Emancipation
Act on April sixteenth, eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Emily's father died in eighteen fifty nine, at which point
her oldest brother, gouvernor Kemball Warren, known as GK, took
over as head of the family. GK had graduated from
the US Military Academy also known as West Point, and
eventually rose to the rank of general in the U.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
S Army.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Emily and GK were close, and in eighteen sixty four,
during the Civil War, she went to visit him and
attended a ball that was being held to try to
raise the morale of the troops, and it was there
that she met Washington Roebling, who was on her brother's staff.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Roebling was the son of John Augustus Roebling, who had
been born in Germany and immigrated to the United States.
John Robling was an engineer who was regarded as one
of North America's foremost experts on suspension bridges. He had
also developed and patented an improvement on the making of
wire rope, the kind of rope that was used in
(04:02):
making those bridges. Washington had trained with his father before
pursuing a formal study at Rensler Institute later Rensler Polytechnic
Institute and Troy, New York. He had graduated in eighteen
fifty seven, joined the US Army in eighteen sixty one,
and eventually attained the rank of colonel in the Army.
During the Civil War, he worked as an engineer and
(04:23):
also served in combat.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Emily in Washington fell in love immediately, and they wrote
one another an enormous volume of letters, many of which
still survive and are in the collection of the Center
for Brooklyn History. They got married in cold Spring on
January eighteenth, eighteen sixty five, in a double ceremony, with
Emily's brother Edgar marrying Cornelia Barrows at the same time.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
After the Civil.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
War, ended Emily, and Washington moved to Cincinnati so Washington
could work with his father on the Cincinnati Covington Suspension Bridge,
which is now known as the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
Construct uction on this bridge and started in eighteen fifty six,
not long after the completion of the Niagara River Gorge Bridge,
which Roebling also designed, but construction had been interrupted because
(05:10):
of the war. After the Cincinnati Covington Bridge opened, John
Roebling focused on an even more ambitious project, one that
he had been pondering since the early eighteen fifties. It
was a bridge over the East River connecting Brooklyn to
the city of New York, specifically the southern part of Manhattan.
Today Brooklyn and Manhattan are, of course two boroughs of
(05:32):
New York, but at the time Brooklyn and New York
were two separate cities. To John Roebling and to a
lot of others, this bridge was an immense but desperately
needed project. The only way to get between the two
cities was by water, so there was an incredible amount
of ferry and barge traffic back and forth across the
East River. It was continually busy at the best of times,
(05:55):
but the East River is really a tidal estuary, and
strong tie could wreak havoc on the ferry crossings, and
so could storms and fog and other weather. If the
East River froze over in the winter, it could shut
down traffic between the two cities entirely. But such a
bridge would need to be very long to make it
all the way across the river, as well as tall
(06:18):
enough to allow ships to pass underneath, and able to
support the weight of pedestrians, carriages and streetcars, and other
mass transit and traffic along and across the East River.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Could not stop while the bridge was being built. In
other words, this seemed like a nearly impossible building and
construction feet.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
In preparation for this project, John sent Washington to Europe
to study bridge building methods, especially the use of pneumatic cassons.
These were pressurized compartments for working underwater, and will be
getting into them in more detail in a minute. Emily
went with them. She was pregnant when they left for
Europe in eighteen sixty seven. Given the state of transportation
(06:58):
in the middle of the nineteenth century, this would have
been a difficult trip for anybody, and being pregnant probably
made it even more exhausting and uncomfortable for her. In
addition to that, Emily sustained a serious fall not long
before she gave birth. Their son, John Augustus Robling the second,
was born in Germany on November twenty first, eighteen sixty seven,
(07:20):
and while Emily did largely recover from her injuries, their
effects were serious enough that she couldn't have any other children.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
The Roblings returned to the United States in March of
eighteen sixty eight, and Washington joined his father in his
work on the Brooklyn Bridge. And to be clear, there
is an entirely different story we could be telling about
this bridge, one that involves controversies and political infighting, corruption,
and New York's Tammany Hall political machine headed by Boss Tweed,
(07:48):
who was one of the trustees of the New York
Bridge Company. The bridge also faced fierce opposition from the
faery industry, along with concerns about whether it could be
built safely and whether the finished bridge would be safe.
And of course, there were people who owned homes and
other property that would be affected by this bridge, everything
from altering the view of the river to raising their
(08:11):
buildings to make way for the bridge.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
But while we're going to be talking about some of
what went into the bridge's construction, what we are really
focused on today is Emily and Washington's story. Like you
could have a whole podcast series just about the bridge.
There are entire books just about the bridge. We are
not covering everything about the bridge. We're really focused on
these two people. We will get back to this, including
(08:36):
how Washington's role in the bridge suddenly became a lot
bigger before construction had even begun after a sponsor break.
John Roebling's final designs for the Brooklyn Bridge, also known
(08:56):
as the East River Bridge, were approved on June twenty first,
eighteen sixty nine. Of course, this followed all kinds of
planning and back and forth that were not really getting
into This bridge would have two immense towers, one on
the Manhattan side of the East River and one on
the Brooklyn side. These towers would support four steel cables,
(09:17):
with huge anchorages securing the cables at each end of
the bridge. At the time, these towers were expected to
be taller than any structure in New York except for
the spire of Trinity Church, and they would be built
on the bedrock on the river bottom. This was estimated
to be twelve meters down on the Brooklyn side and
(09:37):
twenty two meters down on the Manhattan side. But on
July twenty second, eighteen sixty nine, John Robling died a
little less than a month before and just a week
after getting approval on the design, John and Washington had
been doing a final survey for the Brooklyn Tower. John
had gone out to the end of a ferry dock
to get the best view of the site and win
(09:59):
a fair He tried to dock there his foot had
been crushed.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I'm a little unclear on the exact details because there
are different accounts of this, including from the time that
used different terminology to explain what happened, and the terms
that they used don't mean the same thing. But basically,
he had been standing on part of the structure that
the fairies routinely struck while they were docking. That was
(10:25):
why that part of the structure was there to like
deflect and spread out impact from the approaching fairies. And
when this fairy was approaching, he stepped back onto an
adjacent beam. He thought that would be a safe place
to stand, but it wasn't, and when the ferry struck
the dock, his foot was trapped underneath an overlapping part
of it. Some recent descriptions of this call it a
(10:48):
freak accident, or they describe the faery as out of control,
But reporting on the accident in the Brooklyn Eagle on
June thirtieth, two days after it happened, make it sound
like the ferry was docking normally. David McCullough's The Great Bridge,
the epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge,
makes it sound like standing on the beam was a
rookie mistake one John understood that he had made. John
(11:12):
was taken to a doctor, where he took charge of
his own care. Four of his toes had to be amputated,
which he insisted be done without anesthesia. He dressed his
own wounds afterward, and all during all of this just
continued to focus on what needed to happen with the bridge.
Before long, he developed signs of tetanus, which is often
(11:33):
fatal if untreated, and there were no effective treatments for it.
Yet some descriptions seemed to imply that John caused his
own death through the treatments he insisted on but really,
the toxin producing bacteria that caused tetanus could have been
introduced into his wounds at any point during all of this,
including during the initial injury if it broke the skin.
(11:55):
Antiseptic surgical techniques were still in their infancy in Western medicine.
Josephs had started publishing on the topic in March of
eighteen sixty seven, but that was pretty recent and those
ideas were not widely accepted in the US until about
a decade later. Washington Roebling, who was thirty two, was
soon hired to take his late father's place as chief
(12:17):
engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge project. Although he was following
designs that his father had made, doing so meant that
he was continually making decisions about how to implement those
designs in the physical world, and initially he also did
a lot of work on site, especially when it came
to things that were critical to the bridge's successful completion.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
This included working underwater in the pneumatic case songs. Briefly,
and very approximately, imagine this as a wooden building without
a floor. The ones for the Brooklyn Bridge measured roughly
one hundred seventy by one hundred two feet that's roughly
fifty one by thirty one meters, with a ceiling formed
by layers and layers timber. This would be lowered down
(13:02):
to the river bed and pressurized to keep the water out.
Workers would enter the cason through a shaft and dig
away clay, rock, boulders, and other material from the riverbed,
which was removed through a waste shaft. As the workers
removed the material, the casson would sink down into that
space until it hit the bedrock, and at that point
it would be filled with concrete and become part of
(13:24):
the bridge's foundation. This was hot, dirty work, and it
was also dangerous. Among other things, people didn't fully understand
the effects of atmospheric pressure on the body or what
it took to keep nitrogen bubbles from forming in people's
blood when they left a pressurized environment. Illnesses had been
(13:45):
reported among workers and pressurized casuons as early as eighteen
forty one. Eventually, the severe pain, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty thinking,
and other symptoms that we know today as decompression sickness
were being described as cason disease. At least one hundred
workers on the Brooklyn Bridge developed decompression sickness. It's possible
(14:09):
there were more, since record keeping with spotty. Some accounts
site workers on the Brooklyn Bridge as coining the term
the bends because of the way decompression sickness can cause
people to suddenly double over in pain. But the Brooklyn
Bridge's casons were filled with concrete in eighteen seventy one
and eighteen seventy two, and Merriam Webster cites the first
use of the term the bendz in writing as happening
(14:32):
a decade later. The Oxford English Dictionary gives an even
later year of eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Washington.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Roebling first developed decompression sickness after trying to fight a
fire in the Brooklyn Cason in eighteen seventy This fire
had spread within the timbers of the ceiling of the cason.
Before anybody noticed what was going on, it had burned
through these pockets of pressurized oxygen that were hidden in
those layers and layers of timber. Robling spent hours in
(15:02):
the cason searching for pockets of undetected fire. Eventually this
fire was extinguished, but it led to months of delay
as the timbers involved were repaired and replaced Washington developed
a second and more severe case of decompression sickness in
eighteen seventy two, toward the end of the sinking of
the Cason work on the New York side. The water
(15:25):
is deeper on that side of the East River, requiring
greater pressure within the cason, and this cason was deeper
than any other underwater project up to this point. Ultimately,
this cason wasn't lowered all the way to the bedrock,
in part because of the increasing risk of cason sickness
among the workers. Yeah, Washington, Robling basically assessed the whole
(15:48):
situation and was like, this is.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Gonna be fine. It's going to have to be fined.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Uh. This time, Washington was in so much pain that
he had to be carried home, and the doctors that
examined him thought he would probably die within days. He
experienced mood swings, severe pain, numbness and weakness in his legs,
sensitivity to light and other, difficulty with his eyesight, and
he had trouble concentrating. It's possible that he had a
(16:17):
series of small strokes as a result of this decompression sickness.
After this, he was not able to return to the
bridge site.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Emily started handling all his correspondents, reading his letters to
him and taking dictation. She also advocated for him, including
meeting with Henry C. Murphy, president of the New York
Bridge Company, to convince him that her husband should remain
in the position of chief engineer. They arranged for him
to take a leave of absence, during which he and
(16:46):
Emily would go to Weisbaden, Germany to stay at a
health spa. They wound up staying there for six months,
returning home in eighteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Washington really didn't recover during his time in Germany, and
at first they tried to keep some distance from the
stress of the job site, so they lived in Trenton,
New Jersey, near the Robling family's industrial complex for making
wire rope. Washington managed the bridge project from there through letters,
with Emily handling all that correspondence for him. In eighteen
(17:16):
seventy seven, they moved back to Brooklyn to an apartment
on Columbia Heights that had a view of the bridge construction.
Washington watched the bridge's progress through binoculars and a telescope.
Emily acted as his liaison to the construction site, meeting
with him and carrying his instructions to the site every morning,
and then returning in the evening to update him on
(17:37):
the progress and talk through the next steps. Over time,
she developed a thorough knowledge of the bridge and its construction.
When the team of assistant engineers who were working on
the bridge needed clarification on something, Emily was the one
who provided it. When officials wanted an explanation for why
something was taking so long or why it was costing
(17:59):
as much as it was, that once again came from Emily.
When bids were solicited for new components or materials and
the bidders had questions about what they needed to submit,
the person they asked was Emily. She understood all the
math and all the engineering and all the logistics involved.
It's possible that Emily wrote a series of public addresses
(18:20):
that were delivered by Master mechanic Frank Farrington about the
bridge and its construction. She definitely became the first woman
ever to address the American Society of Civil Engineers, which
was years before there were any women among its actual members.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
In December of eighteen eighty one, Emily was one of
the people selected to walk across the partially completed bridge
leading a team of officials. So partially complete in this
instance means that this was mostly an open bridge structure
with planks laid down to walk on. Sounds like my attic.
Some officials in the group decided to take a ferry
(18:56):
back because they did not want to repeat that walk
on planks high over the East River, but Emily was
apparently just unflappable. According to some accounts, once they had
crossed the bridge, someone opened a bottle of champagne they
had brought and toasted her.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Words slowly spread beyond the job site that Emily Roebling
was so deeply involved with the work on the bridge.
On January sixteenth, eighteen eighty two, an alumni dinner was
held at Rensler Polytechnic Institute, which of course was Washington's
alma mater. Mining engineer Rossiter W. Raymond gave an address
at this dinner that was a toast to sweethearts and wives,
(19:32):
and which he said, quote, I cannot forbear, gentlemen, the
attempt in closing to put into words a vision that
has risen before me as I have sat among you,
a vision of real life incarnating far more forcibly than
my feeble rhymes the strength, the versatility, the helpfulness, the
victory of human love. It is the vision of a
(19:53):
chamber in the neighboring city where lies one of your number,
a martyr to his own zeal and devotion, as an engine,
whose monument, when long, hence we trust he shall have
passed away, will span the estuary beyond which tomorrow's sun
is soon to rise, a memorial more stately than mausoleum
or pyramid. And in this picture of the master workman
(20:17):
directing from his bed of pain, the master work, I
see another figure, a queen of beauty and of fashion,
become a servant for love's sake, a true helpmate, furnishing
swift feet and skillful hands, and quick brain and strong
heart to reinforce the weakness and the weariness that could not,
unassisted fully execute the plans they form, but that stand
(20:40):
with this assistance, almost as in the vigor of health. Gentlemen,
I know that the name of a woman should not
be lightly spoken in a public place. I am aware
that such a speech is especially audacious from the mouth
of a stranger. But I believe you will equip me
of any lack of delicacy or of reverence. When I
utter what lies at this moment, half articulate upon all
(21:02):
your lips the name of missus Washington Robling.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
While Raymond's toast described Washington Robling as a master workman
directing his master work, it was delivered in the midst
of ongoing efforts to remove him from the role of
chief engineer because of his disabilities. Those efforts had gathered
steam in eighteen eighty one after the election of a
new mayor, and of course some people were deeply suspicious
(21:26):
of the fact that a woman was essentially taking his place.
A few months after the alumni dinner, on July eleventh,
eighteen eighty two, an article ran in the Brooklyn Union
criticizing how long the bridge's construction had taken and accusing
Washington of leaving the Board of bridge trustees in the dark.
It read, in part quote, personally, Colonel Roebling has the
(21:48):
sympathy of the public in the sad illness which he
incurred through the bridge. It goes without saying that a
professional man who is not in a physical condition to
appear at a single meeting of the board of trustees
that employs him is not a proper person to clothe
with the vast responsibility that belongs to the chief engineer.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Of a work like this. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
At this point, the bridge had definitely taken an incredibly
long time, and it had been very expensive, and there
are all kinds of controversies we're not getting into, uh,
but Washington Robling was really scapegoaded for all of it.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And the fact that he.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Was disabled like made that easy to do well. Yeah,
and it like to a lot of people, it made
it seem like transparently obvious that he was not a
fit person to do this. In spite of these sentiments
and the efforts to replace him, Robling did remain in
his role, and the bridge opened a little less than
a year later, which we'll talk about after sponsor break.
(22:53):
As the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge drew near in
eighteen eighty three, a reporter from the Brooklyn Union came
to the Robling home number one ten Columbia Heights to
interview Washington Robling. Earlier in the day, though Washington had
met with an artist who was making a bust of
him for the opening ceremonies and he needed to rest,
so at first, this reporter talked to Emily and the
(23:14):
reporter's words quote. As has already been stated in these columns,
the gifted lady has been one of the most efficient
aids to her husband in his great work, since he
was prostrated by the Caisson disease, and through having assisted
him in his intricate calculations and having attended to all
his correspondents, is familiar with every detail of the structure.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
In the end, about.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Half this Reporter's published interview was with Emily before it
was determined that Washington was ready to be interviewed as well.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Shortly before the opening ceremonies. Emily was also the first
person to drive across the bridge in a gig with
a retractable hood, carrying a white rooster in a cage
as a symbol of victory. After that res died, it
was mounted and kept in the Robling home.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I don't know whether the rooster died later of natural
causes or whether this was I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
It's an oddly charming detail.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
It is.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
It comes up in like every account of this. The
Brooklyn Bridge opened to enormous fanfare on May twenty fourth,
eighteen eighty three, after more than fourteen years of construction.
At the time, of its opening, it became the world's
longest suspension bridge. As we said earlier, this was an
engineering marvel. President Chester A. Arthur, New York Governor Grover Cleveland,
(24:33):
and all kinds of other elected officials were present for
these festivities. The Roblings had thought it would be too
much of a physical strain for Washington to try to
attend this in person, so instead they held a reception
at their home for friends and colleagues afterward, including the President.
The opening ceremonies included several speeches. One was by Abram S. Hewitt,
(24:56):
in which he recognized many of the people involved, beginning
with quote John A. Robling, who conceived the project and
formulated the plan of the bridge, and quote Washington A Robling, who,
inheriting his father's genius and more than his father's knowledge
and skill, has directed the execution of this great work
from its inception to its completion. Hewitt then mentioned the
(25:19):
assistant engineers foremen, and quote the unnamed men, by whose
unflinching courage in the depths of the caissons and upon
the suspended wires, the work was carried on amid storms
and accidents and dangers sufficient to appall the stoutest heart,
and he went on to say, quote one name, however,
which may find no place in the official records, cannot
(25:42):
be passed over here in silence. In ancient times, when
great works were constructed, a goddess was chosen to whose tender.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Care they were dedicated.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Thus the ruins of the acropolis today recall the name
of Pallas Athena to an admiring world. In the Middle Ages,
the blessing of some saint was invoked to protect from
the rude attacks of the barbarians and the destructive hand
of time. The building erected by man's devotion to the
worship of God. So with this bridge will ever be
(26:11):
coupled the thought of one through the subtle alembic of
whose brain and by whose facile fingers, communication was maintained
between the directing power of its construction and the obedient
agencies of its execution. It is thus an everlasting monument
to the self sacrificing devotion of a woman and of
(26:32):
her capacity for that higher education from which she has.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Been too long debarred.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
The name of Missus Emily Warren Roebling will thus be
inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature
and with all that is wonderful in the constructive.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
World of art.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
The Brooklyn Bridge was Washington Roebling's last major construction project,
although he did some other design and consultation work after
it was completed. About a year later, the Roblings moved
to Troy, New York, while their son studied at renssela
Or Polytechnic Institute. He had a heart condition and Emily
wanted to be close by. John Robling the second got
(27:13):
married and later moved to Arizona, and Emily in Washington
moved to a mansion they had built in Trenton. After
the bridge was completed and their son had started an
adult life of his own, Emily Warren Robling focused most
of her time on social causes and philanthropy. She was
descended from a Revolutionary war veteran named John Barrett, and
(27:34):
she became active in the Daughters of the American Revolution,
including serving as Vice President General of the society's national organization.
She joined the New Jersey chapter of the Federation of
Women's Clubs and held offices in a number of other
clubs and societies, including Soorrhosis, which was the first professional
Women's Organization in the US, the Women's National War Relief Association,
(27:58):
the Prison Aid Society in the New Jersey Historical Society,
among many many others. In eighteen ninety six, she took
another trip to Europe. This time she was on her
own because the sea voyage and subsequent travel were incompatible
with her husband's health. She was received at Buckingham Palace
by Princess Christian in an audience that Queen Victoria commanded
(28:20):
should be treated as though it had been with the
monarch herself. She also attended the coronation of Zar Nicholas
the Second of Russia, and after returning to the US,
embarked on a lecture tour recounting her experiences.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
In eighteen ninety nine, Emily Warren Roebling was one of
forty eight women to earn a certificate in business law
from the Women's Law Class at New York University. She
gave a commencement address titled a Wife's Disabilities, in which
she advocated for women's equality under the law, including women's
suffrage and property rights. She was also awarded a fifty
(28:55):
dollars prize in an essay contest given by missus J.
Hedges Crowell the best essay on the theme of what
an American woman loses by her marriage to a foreigner.
Some accounts conflate the commencement address with this essay, but
they were two different pieces. Robling's thoughts on the contest
theme also wouldn't be considered particularly progressive today. I'll interrupt
(29:18):
and say the contest theme itself.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Would not know so progressive today at all.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
It is problematic her work on the theme concluded quote.
Thinking this subject carefully over for many weeks, I have
come to the conclusion that what an American woman chiefly
loses by her marriage to a foreigner is the forfeit
of her claim to an American husband. A good American
(29:43):
husband is the highest possible representative of civilized man. All right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I don't have anything.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Further to add to that, except maybe, like it got
an an interior yikes from me, Yeah when I read it.
In nineteen oh three, Roebling edited and published the Journal
of the Reverend Silas, Constant pastor of the Presbyterian Church
at Yorktown, New York, which may seem kind of random
(30:21):
based on all the things we've talked about in her life.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
So far.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
In the preface to this she wrote that she had
once been given a collection of four generations of family
papers which she had burned because they were old and musty,
not realizing when she did that that she was destroying
quote links in the chain connecting the past with the
present that no amount of thought or search could replace.
(30:46):
She said that in editing and publishing this journal it
was an attempt to make amends for that past deed.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Throughout all of this she occasionally returned to the idea
of the bridge, including commenting on various proposals for changes
or modifications, or the building of new bridges. She was
regularly quoted in newspaper articles about the bridge, with that
reporting frequently referencing how involved she had been in its construction.
(31:13):
In her work on the bridge came up in her
own correspondence as well, as she wrote in an eighteen
ninety eight letter to her son, quote, I am still
feeling well enough to stoutly maintain against all critics, including
my own son, that I have more brains, common sense,
and know how generally than have any two engineers, civil
or uncivil. And but for me, the Brooklyn Bridge would
(31:35):
never have had the name Robling in any way connected
with it. I don't know the context for this letter,
but I'm sort of.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Imagining it as maybe their son being like, hey, you're
getting a little older, maybe you should take a step back,
and her being like, Nope, that is some family business
right out in public.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Emily Warren Roebling died at home in Trenton, New Jersey,
on February twenty eighth, eighteen ninety three. A lot of
sources give her cause of death as stomach cancer, although
a few instead cites some kind of muscle weakness. Some
of those claim that this weakness was brought on by
her ruining her health by working on the bridge. Several
(32:21):
New York area newspapers reported on her illness in the
last days of her life, many of them referencing the
role that she had played in the building of the
Brooklyn Bridge.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
While various sources today point out that she did not
have an obituary in The New York Times until twenty eighteen,
when she was featured as part of its Overlooked series.
Obituaries were printed in at least two newspapers on March
first of eighteen ninety three. One was The New York Tribune,
and the other was the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Tribune
(32:52):
described her first and greatest prominence as quote directing the
details of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Eagle
called her quote one of the best known club women
in the country, before saying quote, Missus Roebling's chief claim
to fame lies in the part which she took in
superintending the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Later on this
(33:13):
obituary read quote, she had followed the progress of the
bridge almost as carefully as had her husband, and she
knew almost as much about it as he did. But
it also added quote, the work done by Missus Roebling
at this time was far too great for any woman,
and her health has never been the same since then.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Washington Robling later remarried, and he died in nineteen twenty
six at the age of eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
In nineteen fifty one, a plaque was unveiled at the
Brooklyn Bridge which reads, quote the builders of the Bridge
dedicated to the memory of Emily Warren Robling eighteen forty
three to nineteen oh three, whose faith and courage helped
her stricken husband Colonel Washington A. Roebling ce eighteen thirty
seven to nineteen twenty six complete the construction of this
bridge from the plans of his father Sean A. Robling
(34:01):
ce Eighteen oh six to eighteen sixty nine, who gave
his life to the bridge. Back of every great work
we can find the self sacrificing devotion of a woman.
This tablet erected by the Brooklyn Engineers Club with funds
raised by popular subscription. On May twenty ninth, twenty eighteen,
the block of Columbia Heights, where the Roblings lived in Brooklyn,
(34:21):
was renamed Emily Warren Robling Way. Today there are at
least two children's books about her. They are Secret Engineer,
How Emily Robling Built the Brooklyn Bridge and How Emily
Saved the Bridge The Story of Emily Warren Robling, both
published in twenty nineteen. There's also a novel titled No
Life But This, which came out in twenty twenty. There
(34:44):
is also a book, like a nonfiction book, called Silent Builder,
Emily Warren Robling and the Brooklyn Bridge. To be clear,
I did not get this book for today's episode. The
original edition was published in nineteen eighty four by Association
Faculty Press, and it's one hundred and eighty eight pages long.
Subsequent editions are a lot longer, but were independently published
(35:08):
and just don't seem to be available in many libraries,
so that book exists, I could not get my hands
on it.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Do you have listener mail for us as well? I do?
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I have listener mail.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
This is from Amy and it is about something that
we alluded to in a recent Saturday Classic. But we
know not everyone listens to every episode, so we're just
gonna say it again. Amy wrote our old episodes disappearing. Recently,
my podcast feed Overcast has apparently started removing old episodes.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Is this just me?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Or is this intentional? I've been working through some older
episodes I hadn't heard before, and until recently, the archives
went all the way back to the initial two thousand
and eight episodes. As of today, though the oldest looks
to be from July twenty ten, I've in the sixth
and I think older ones have maybe gradually disappeared. Thanks
Freddy Info. I was hoping to catch up someday, but
(35:58):
maybe that isn't possible anymore, so I wrote back to Amy.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
They answered the question.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I will now answer it for anyone who is experiencing
the same thing as I understand Overcast.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
It pulls from.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
The Apple Podcasts feed of the show and back in
I think October, Apple Podcasts put in a limit of
how many episodes could be in a show's feed to
two thousand episodes. We have more than that, and so
the oldest episodes just progressively drop off as we put
(36:29):
out new ones. I think Overcast actually is sort of
lagging a tiny bit behind Apple in terms of dropping
off the old ones that did seem like there were
just a few more episodes on Overcast than an Apple podcast.
Apple podcasts not the only player with a limit. Many
of them are have you know, have either had limits
(36:50):
for a long time or are putting in new limits.
I totally understand doing this, yeah, because there are continually
more and more podcasts, and we all have continually more
and more episodes. It is not within our control, though,
right that these are decisions that are being made by
Apple and Overcast and whoever else is making podcast players
(37:14):
the whole feed all the way back to two thousand
and eight, at which point it was a very different
show with totally different hosts who have not worked with
us in many, many, many, many years that RSS feed
still has everything in it, and the iHeart the iHeartRadio
website still has everything in it. iHeartRadio app still has
(37:35):
everything in it. There are also other players that still
include entire feeds for all the shows, but since there
is so much variation from one device to another and
one app store to another, we can't really keep up
to date with all of them, right, And I would
(37:56):
not be surprised if more start doing limitters because, as
you said, like it's an industry that continues to grow,
and because it's everyone from like people like us that
work for a company that produces them to people doing
them on their own, Like, there's no way to really
manage how many get published in a given week across
(38:18):
the industry. So the solution for companies that host in
are or feed and are running out of space on
servers or just trying to look forward to a future
where this continues to be a growth industry, they got
to start putting in limiters.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I know it stinks, yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I will also say I know we have sort of
made a thing of having a PhD in SYMHC for
people who have listened to every single episode. That is
something I would only encourage if like you super want
to do it, and if you want to listen to
episodes that are by totally different hosts with a totally
different outlook and a totally different format of the show. Really,
(38:57):
even from the super early ones, which are only often
five or ten minutes long, maybe not five but maybe
more like fifteen.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You're some that are pretty short. I will also say
something super rebellious. Okay, you are one of those people
who wants a stuff you missed in history class, a
PhD in sy m See, I don't know if I
forgot letters. Just buy the shirt. Nobody's gonna check you. No,
we're not checking. Yeah, nobody listen. Our time on this
(39:27):
rock is finite. Do whatever you want that doesn't hurt somebody. Yes,
I'm not gonna quiz you. If I run into you
and see you wearing that shirt, I won't remember all
of them, So super not.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
It is not a challenge coin No.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
If you just feel like you got a lot more
knowledge or you did a lot of work to listen
to a lot of shows, you don't have to do
all of them. For anybody that did do all of them,
please don't feel devalued in this way. I just think
like it's given the changing landscape of availability of things,
it's not worth being too stressed over it.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Correct, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
So if you want to send us a note about
this or any other podcast or history podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com, we're on social media app Missed in History,
you can subscribe to our show as we just said,
on the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere else you'd like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
(40:30):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm tra
CV Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We got lots of requests for an episode on Emily
Warren Robling thanks to the TV show The Gilded Age.
I have not watched this television show at all. One
pu there's too much TV to watch, and I just haven't.
I did sit down after getting these requests and I
was like, I'm gonna watch the first episode and I
(00:38):
don't remember what the runtime on the first episode was,
but it was more minutes than I had and I
was like, maybe later, and I just I haven't watched it.
According to IMDb, though Emily Warren Robling is played by
Liz Wisen in episodes five and seven of the second season,
that second season has ended now, so hopefully for folks
(01:00):
are still interested in this episode, Emily Warren Robling played
a crucial role in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
This was not near as much of a secret as
most recent descriptions of all this make it sound like
there's this tone of like and no one knew she
was involved at all until just now not the case.
(01:21):
It was, however, highly unusual for a woman to have
this kind of role in a major engineering project at
the time. This was a role she stepped into after
her husband became disabled. So this is a story of
an engineering marvel and also a story about what mainstream
(01:42):
US society expected of women and of disabled people in
the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Emily Warren was born on September twenty third, eighteen forty three,
in Cold Spring, New York. She was the eleventh of
twelve children born to Sylvanas and Phoebe Lickley Warren. Although
only of those siblings survived childhood, their family was comfortable
but not really wealthy, and they were prominent in their community.
Emily's father held a number of elected roles in the
(02:10):
state and local government, and he was also friends with
previous podcast subject Washington Irving.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I saw one description of the family that was like
they weren't rich by Hudson River Valley standards.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I was like, would they have been rich somewhere else?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
In eighteen fifty eight, Emily started studying at Georgetown Academy
of the Visitation. This was a Catholic school for girls
established in Washington, d c. In seventeen ninety nine. The
course of study included subjects like algebra, geometry, the sciences, languages,
and music, and students sat for public exams every year.
(02:46):
While Emily was enrolled there. The school subsidized its costs
of operations by selling enslaved people and by hiring out
their labor. The people who were enslaved at the school
or were collectively owned by the religious order that ran
the school, were emancipated under the District of Columbia Emancipation
Act on April sixteenth, eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Emily's father died in eighteen fifty nine, at which point
her oldest brother, gouvernor Kemball Warren, known as GK, took
over as head of the family. GK had graduated from
the US Military Academy also known as West Point, and
eventually rose to the rank of general in the U.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
S Army.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Emily and GK were close, and in eighteen sixty four,
during the Civil War, she went to visit him and
attended a ball that was being held to try to
raise the morale of the troops, and it was there
that she met Washington Roebling, who was on her brother's staff.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Roebling was the son of John Augustus Roebling, who had
been born in Germany and immigrated to the United States.
John Robling was an engineer who was regarded as one
of North America's foremost experts on suspension bridges. He had
also developed and patented an improvement on the making of
wire rope, the kind of rope that was used in
(04:02):
making those bridges. Washington had trained with his father before
pursuing a formal study at Rensler Institute later Rensler Polytechnic
Institute and Troy, New York. He had graduated in eighteen
fifty seven, joined the US Army in eighteen sixty one,
and eventually attained the rank of colonel in the Army.
During the Civil War, he worked as an engineer and
(04:23):
also served in combat.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Emily in Washington fell in love immediately, and they wrote
one another an enormous volume of letters, many of which
still survive and are in the collection of the Center
for Brooklyn History. They got married in cold Spring on
January eighteenth, eighteen sixty five, in a double ceremony, with
Emily's brother Edgar marrying Cornelia Barrows at the same time.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
After the Civil.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
War, ended Emily, and Washington moved to Cincinnati so Washington
could work with his father on the Cincinnati Covington Suspension Bridge,
which is now known as the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
Construct uction on this bridge and started in eighteen fifty six,
not long after the completion of the Niagara River Gorge Bridge,
which Roebling also designed, but construction had been interrupted because
(05:10):
of the war. After the Cincinnati Covington Bridge opened, John
Roebling focused on an even more ambitious project, one that
he had been pondering since the early eighteen fifties. It
was a bridge over the East River connecting Brooklyn to
the city of New York, specifically the southern part of Manhattan.
Today Brooklyn and Manhattan are, of course two boroughs of
(05:32):
New York, but at the time Brooklyn and New York
were two separate cities. To John Roebling and to a
lot of others, this bridge was an immense but desperately
needed project. The only way to get between the two
cities was by water, so there was an incredible amount
of ferry and barge traffic back and forth across the
East River. It was continually busy at the best of times,
(05:55):
but the East River is really a tidal estuary, and
strong tie could wreak havoc on the ferry crossings, and
so could storms and fog and other weather. If the
East River froze over in the winter, it could shut
down traffic between the two cities entirely. But such a
bridge would need to be very long to make it
all the way across the river, as well as tall
(06:18):
enough to allow ships to pass underneath, and able to
support the weight of pedestrians, carriages and streetcars, and other
mass transit and traffic along and across the East River.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Could not stop while the bridge was being built. In
other words, this seemed like a nearly impossible building and
construction feet.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
In preparation for this project, John sent Washington to Europe
to study bridge building methods, especially the use of pneumatic cassons.
These were pressurized compartments for working underwater, and will be
getting into them in more detail in a minute. Emily
went with them. She was pregnant when they left for
Europe in eighteen sixty seven. Given the state of transportation
(06:58):
in the middle of the nineteenth century, this would have
been a difficult trip for anybody, and being pregnant probably
made it even more exhausting and uncomfortable for her. In
addition to that, Emily sustained a serious fall not long
before she gave birth. Their son, John Augustus Robling the second,
was born in Germany on November twenty first, eighteen sixty seven,
(07:20):
and while Emily did largely recover from her injuries, their
effects were serious enough that she couldn't have any other children.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
The Roblings returned to the United States in March of
eighteen sixty eight, and Washington joined his father in his
work on the Brooklyn Bridge. And to be clear, there
is an entirely different story we could be telling about
this bridge, one that involves controversies and political infighting, corruption,
and New York's Tammany Hall political machine headed by Boss Tweed,
(07:48):
who was one of the trustees of the New York
Bridge Company. The bridge also faced fierce opposition from the
faery industry, along with concerns about whether it could be
built safely and whether the finished bridge would be safe.
And of course, there were people who owned homes and
other property that would be affected by this bridge, everything
from altering the view of the river to raising their
(08:11):
buildings to make way for the bridge.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
But while we're going to be talking about some of
what went into the bridge's construction, what we are really
focused on today is Emily and Washington's story. Like you
could have a whole podcast series just about the bridge.
There are entire books just about the bridge. We are
not covering everything about the bridge. We're really focused on
these two people. We will get back to this, including
(08:36):
how Washington's role in the bridge suddenly became a lot
bigger before construction had even begun after a sponsor break.
John Roebling's final designs for the Brooklyn Bridge, also known
(08:56):
as the East River Bridge, were approved on June twenty first,
eighteen sixty nine. Of course, this followed all kinds of
planning and back and forth that were not really getting
into This bridge would have two immense towers, one on
the Manhattan side of the East River and one on
the Brooklyn side. These towers would support four steel cables,
(09:17):
with huge anchorages securing the cables at each end of
the bridge. At the time, these towers were expected to
be taller than any structure in New York except for
the spire of Trinity Church, and they would be built
on the bedrock on the river bottom. This was estimated
to be twelve meters down on the Brooklyn side and
(09:37):
twenty two meters down on the Manhattan side. But on
July twenty second, eighteen sixty nine, John Robling died a
little less than a month before and just a week
after getting approval on the design, John and Washington had
been doing a final survey for the Brooklyn Tower. John
had gone out to the end of a ferry dock
to get the best view of the site and win
(09:59):
a fair He tried to dock there his foot had
been crushed.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I'm a little unclear on the exact details because there
are different accounts of this, including from the time that
used different terminology to explain what happened, and the terms
that they used don't mean the same thing. But basically,
he had been standing on part of the structure that
the fairies routinely struck while they were docking. That was
(10:25):
why that part of the structure was there to like
deflect and spread out impact from the approaching fairies. And
when this fairy was approaching, he stepped back onto an
adjacent beam. He thought that would be a safe place
to stand, but it wasn't, and when the ferry struck
the dock, his foot was trapped underneath an overlapping part
of it. Some recent descriptions of this call it a
(10:48):
freak accident, or they describe the faery as out of control,
But reporting on the accident in the Brooklyn Eagle on
June thirtieth, two days after it happened, make it sound
like the ferry was docking normally. David McCullough's The Great Bridge,
the epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge,
makes it sound like standing on the beam was a
rookie mistake one John understood that he had made. John
(11:12):
was taken to a doctor, where he took charge of
his own care. Four of his toes had to be amputated,
which he insisted be done without anesthesia. He dressed his
own wounds afterward, and all during all of this just
continued to focus on what needed to happen with the bridge.
Before long, he developed signs of tetanus, which is often
(11:33):
fatal if untreated, and there were no effective treatments for it.
Yet some descriptions seemed to imply that John caused his
own death through the treatments he insisted on but really,
the toxin producing bacteria that caused tetanus could have been
introduced into his wounds at any point during all of this,
including during the initial injury if it broke the skin.
(11:55):
Antiseptic surgical techniques were still in their infancy in Western medicine.
Josephs had started publishing on the topic in March of
eighteen sixty seven, but that was pretty recent and those
ideas were not widely accepted in the US until about
a decade later. Washington Roebling, who was thirty two, was
soon hired to take his late father's place as chief
(12:17):
engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge project. Although he was following
designs that his father had made, doing so meant that
he was continually making decisions about how to implement those
designs in the physical world, and initially he also did
a lot of work on site, especially when it came
to things that were critical to the bridge's successful completion.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
This included working underwater in the pneumatic case songs. Briefly,
and very approximately, imagine this as a wooden building without
a floor. The ones for the Brooklyn Bridge measured roughly
one hundred seventy by one hundred two feet that's roughly
fifty one by thirty one meters, with a ceiling formed
by layers and layers timber. This would be lowered down
(13:02):
to the river bed and pressurized to keep the water out.
Workers would enter the cason through a shaft and dig
away clay, rock, boulders, and other material from the riverbed,
which was removed through a waste shaft. As the workers
removed the material, the casson would sink down into that
space until it hit the bedrock, and at that point
it would be filled with concrete and become part of
(13:24):
the bridge's foundation. This was hot, dirty work, and it
was also dangerous. Among other things, people didn't fully understand
the effects of atmospheric pressure on the body or what
it took to keep nitrogen bubbles from forming in people's
blood when they left a pressurized environment. Illnesses had been
(13:45):
reported among workers and pressurized casuons as early as eighteen
forty one. Eventually, the severe pain, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty thinking,
and other symptoms that we know today as decompression sickness
were being described as cason disease. At least one hundred
workers on the Brooklyn Bridge developed decompression sickness. It's possible
(14:09):
there were more, since record keeping with spotty. Some accounts
site workers on the Brooklyn Bridge as coining the term
the bends because of the way decompression sickness can cause
people to suddenly double over in pain. But the Brooklyn
Bridge's casons were filled with concrete in eighteen seventy one
and eighteen seventy two, and Merriam Webster cites the first
use of the term the bendz in writing as happening
(14:32):
a decade later. The Oxford English Dictionary gives an even
later year of eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Washington.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Roebling first developed decompression sickness after trying to fight a
fire in the Brooklyn Cason in eighteen seventy This fire
had spread within the timbers of the ceiling of the cason.
Before anybody noticed what was going on, it had burned
through these pockets of pressurized oxygen that were hidden in
those layers and layers of timber. Robling spent hours in
(15:02):
the cason searching for pockets of undetected fire. Eventually this
fire was extinguished, but it led to months of delay
as the timbers involved were repaired and replaced Washington developed
a second and more severe case of decompression sickness in
eighteen seventy two, toward the end of the sinking of
the Cason work on the New York side. The water
(15:25):
is deeper on that side of the East River, requiring
greater pressure within the cason, and this cason was deeper
than any other underwater project up to this point. Ultimately,
this cason wasn't lowered all the way to the bedrock,
in part because of the increasing risk of cason sickness
among the workers. Yeah, Washington, Robling basically assessed the whole
(15:48):
situation and was like, this is.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Gonna be fine. It's going to have to be fined.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Uh. This time, Washington was in so much pain that
he had to be carried home, and the doctors that
examined him thought he would probably die within days. He
experienced mood swings, severe pain, numbness and weakness in his legs,
sensitivity to light and other, difficulty with his eyesight, and
he had trouble concentrating. It's possible that he had a
(16:17):
series of small strokes as a result of this decompression sickness.
After this, he was not able to return to the
bridge site.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Emily started handling all his correspondents, reading his letters to
him and taking dictation. She also advocated for him, including
meeting with Henry C. Murphy, president of the New York
Bridge Company, to convince him that her husband should remain
in the position of chief engineer. They arranged for him
to take a leave of absence, during which he and
(16:46):
Emily would go to Weisbaden, Germany to stay at a
health spa. They wound up staying there for six months,
returning home in eighteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Washington really didn't recover during his time in Germany, and
at first they tried to keep some distance from the
stress of the job site, so they lived in Trenton,
New Jersey, near the Robling family's industrial complex for making
wire rope. Washington managed the bridge project from there through letters,
with Emily handling all that correspondence for him. In eighteen
(17:16):
seventy seven, they moved back to Brooklyn to an apartment
on Columbia Heights that had a view of the bridge construction.
Washington watched the bridge's progress through binoculars and a telescope.
Emily acted as his liaison to the construction site, meeting
with him and carrying his instructions to the site every morning,
and then returning in the evening to update him on
(17:37):
the progress and talk through the next steps. Over time,
she developed a thorough knowledge of the bridge and its construction.
When the team of assistant engineers who were working on
the bridge needed clarification on something, Emily was the one
who provided it. When officials wanted an explanation for why
something was taking so long or why it was costing
(17:59):
as much as it was, that once again came from Emily.
When bids were solicited for new components or materials and
the bidders had questions about what they needed to submit,
the person they asked was Emily. She understood all the
math and all the engineering and all the logistics involved.
It's possible that Emily wrote a series of public addresses
(18:20):
that were delivered by Master mechanic Frank Farrington about the
bridge and its construction. She definitely became the first woman
ever to address the American Society of Civil Engineers, which
was years before there were any women among its actual members.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
In December of eighteen eighty one, Emily was one of
the people selected to walk across the partially completed bridge
leading a team of officials. So partially complete in this
instance means that this was mostly an open bridge structure
with planks laid down to walk on. Sounds like my attic.
Some officials in the group decided to take a ferry
(18:56):
back because they did not want to repeat that walk
on planks high over the East River, but Emily was
apparently just unflappable. According to some accounts, once they had
crossed the bridge, someone opened a bottle of champagne they
had brought and toasted her.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Words slowly spread beyond the job site that Emily Roebling
was so deeply involved with the work on the bridge.
On January sixteenth, eighteen eighty two, an alumni dinner was
held at Rensler Polytechnic Institute, which of course was Washington's
alma mater. Mining engineer Rossiter W. Raymond gave an address
at this dinner that was a toast to sweethearts and wives,
(19:32):
and which he said, quote, I cannot forbear, gentlemen, the
attempt in closing to put into words a vision that
has risen before me as I have sat among you,
a vision of real life incarnating far more forcibly than
my feeble rhymes the strength, the versatility, the helpfulness, the
victory of human love. It is the vision of a
(19:53):
chamber in the neighboring city where lies one of your number,
a martyr to his own zeal and devotion, as an engine,
whose monument, when long, hence we trust he shall have
passed away, will span the estuary beyond which tomorrow's sun
is soon to rise, a memorial more stately than mausoleum
or pyramid. And in this picture of the master workman
(20:17):
directing from his bed of pain, the master work, I
see another figure, a queen of beauty and of fashion,
become a servant for love's sake, a true helpmate, furnishing
swift feet and skillful hands, and quick brain and strong
heart to reinforce the weakness and the weariness that could not,
unassisted fully execute the plans they form, but that stand
(20:40):
with this assistance, almost as in the vigor of health. Gentlemen,
I know that the name of a woman should not
be lightly spoken in a public place. I am aware
that such a speech is especially audacious from the mouth
of a stranger. But I believe you will equip me
of any lack of delicacy or of reverence. When I
utter what lies at this moment, half articulate upon all
(21:02):
your lips the name of missus Washington Robling.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
While Raymond's toast described Washington Robling as a master workman
directing his master work, it was delivered in the midst
of ongoing efforts to remove him from the role of
chief engineer because of his disabilities. Those efforts had gathered
steam in eighteen eighty one after the election of a
new mayor, and of course some people were deeply suspicious
(21:26):
of the fact that a woman was essentially taking his place.
A few months after the alumni dinner, on July eleventh,
eighteen eighty two, an article ran in the Brooklyn Union
criticizing how long the bridge's construction had taken and accusing
Washington of leaving the Board of bridge trustees in the dark.
It read, in part quote, personally, Colonel Roebling has the
(21:48):
sympathy of the public in the sad illness which he
incurred through the bridge. It goes without saying that a
professional man who is not in a physical condition to
appear at a single meeting of the board of trustees
that employs him is not a proper person to clothe
with the vast responsibility that belongs to the chief engineer.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Of a work like this. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
At this point, the bridge had definitely taken an incredibly
long time, and it had been very expensive, and there
are all kinds of controversies we're not getting into, uh,
but Washington Robling was really scapegoaded for all of it.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And the fact that he.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Was disabled like made that easy to do well. Yeah,
and it like to a lot of people, it made
it seem like transparently obvious that he was not a
fit person to do this. In spite of these sentiments
and the efforts to replace him, Robling did remain in
his role, and the bridge opened a little less than
a year later, which we'll talk about after sponsor break.
(22:53):
As the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge drew near in
eighteen eighty three, a reporter from the Brooklyn Union came
to the Robling home number one ten Columbia Heights to
interview Washington Robling. Earlier in the day, though Washington had
met with an artist who was making a bust of
him for the opening ceremonies and he needed to rest,
so at first, this reporter talked to Emily and the
(23:14):
reporter's words quote. As has already been stated in these columns,
the gifted lady has been one of the most efficient
aids to her husband in his great work, since he
was prostrated by the Caisson disease, and through having assisted
him in his intricate calculations and having attended to all
his correspondents, is familiar with every detail of the structure.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
In the end, about.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Half this Reporter's published interview was with Emily before it
was determined that Washington was ready to be interviewed as well.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Shortly before the opening ceremonies. Emily was also the first
person to drive across the bridge in a gig with
a retractable hood, carrying a white rooster in a cage
as a symbol of victory. After that res died, it
was mounted and kept in the Robling home.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I don't know whether the rooster died later of natural
causes or whether this was I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
It's an oddly charming detail.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
It is.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
It comes up in like every account of this. The
Brooklyn Bridge opened to enormous fanfare on May twenty fourth,
eighteen eighty three, after more than fourteen years of construction.
At the time, of its opening, it became the world's
longest suspension bridge. As we said earlier, this was an
engineering marvel. President Chester A. Arthur, New York Governor Grover Cleveland,
(24:33):
and all kinds of other elected officials were present for
these festivities. The Roblings had thought it would be too
much of a physical strain for Washington to try to
attend this in person, so instead they held a reception
at their home for friends and colleagues afterward, including the President.
The opening ceremonies included several speeches. One was by Abram S. Hewitt,
(24:56):
in which he recognized many of the people involved, beginning
with quote John A. Robling, who conceived the project and
formulated the plan of the bridge, and quote Washington A Robling, who,
inheriting his father's genius and more than his father's knowledge
and skill, has directed the execution of this great work
from its inception to its completion. Hewitt then mentioned the
(25:19):
assistant engineers foremen, and quote the unnamed men, by whose
unflinching courage in the depths of the caissons and upon
the suspended wires, the work was carried on amid storms
and accidents and dangers sufficient to appall the stoutest heart,
and he went on to say, quote one name, however,
which may find no place in the official records, cannot
(25:42):
be passed over here in silence. In ancient times, when
great works were constructed, a goddess was chosen to whose tender.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Care they were dedicated.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Thus the ruins of the acropolis today recall the name
of Pallas Athena to an admiring world. In the Middle Ages,
the blessing of some saint was invoked to protect from
the rude attacks of the barbarians and the destructive hand
of time. The building erected by man's devotion to the
worship of God. So with this bridge will ever be
(26:11):
coupled the thought of one through the subtle alembic of
whose brain and by whose facile fingers, communication was maintained
between the directing power of its construction and the obedient
agencies of its execution. It is thus an everlasting monument
to the self sacrificing devotion of a woman and of
(26:32):
her capacity for that higher education from which she has.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Been too long debarred.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
The name of Missus Emily Warren Roebling will thus be
inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature
and with all that is wonderful in the constructive.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
World of art.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
The Brooklyn Bridge was Washington Roebling's last major construction project,
although he did some other design and consultation work after
it was completed. About a year later, the Roblings moved
to Troy, New York, while their son studied at renssela
Or Polytechnic Institute. He had a heart condition and Emily
wanted to be close by. John Robling the second got
(27:13):
married and later moved to Arizona, and Emily in Washington
moved to a mansion they had built in Trenton. After
the bridge was completed and their son had started an
adult life of his own, Emily Warren Robling focused most
of her time on social causes and philanthropy. She was
descended from a Revolutionary war veteran named John Barrett, and
(27:34):
she became active in the Daughters of the American Revolution,
including serving as Vice President General of the society's national organization.
She joined the New Jersey chapter of the Federation of
Women's Clubs and held offices in a number of other
clubs and societies, including Soorrhosis, which was the first professional
Women's Organization in the US, the Women's National War Relief Association,
(27:58):
the Prison Aid Society in the New Jersey Historical Society,
among many many others. In eighteen ninety six, she took
another trip to Europe. This time she was on her
own because the sea voyage and subsequent travel were incompatible
with her husband's health. She was received at Buckingham Palace
by Princess Christian in an audience that Queen Victoria commanded
(28:20):
should be treated as though it had been with the
monarch herself. She also attended the coronation of Zar Nicholas
the Second of Russia, and after returning to the US,
embarked on a lecture tour recounting her experiences.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
In eighteen ninety nine, Emily Warren Roebling was one of
forty eight women to earn a certificate in business law
from the Women's Law Class at New York University. She
gave a commencement address titled a Wife's Disabilities, in which
she advocated for women's equality under the law, including women's
suffrage and property rights. She was also awarded a fifty
(28:55):
dollars prize in an essay contest given by missus J.
Hedges Crowell the best essay on the theme of what
an American woman loses by her marriage to a foreigner.
Some accounts conflate the commencement address with this essay, but
they were two different pieces. Robling's thoughts on the contest
theme also wouldn't be considered particularly progressive today. I'll interrupt
(29:18):
and say the contest theme itself.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Would not know so progressive today at all.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
It is problematic her work on the theme concluded quote.
Thinking this subject carefully over for many weeks, I have
come to the conclusion that what an American woman chiefly
loses by her marriage to a foreigner is the forfeit
of her claim to an American husband. A good American
(29:43):
husband is the highest possible representative of civilized man. All right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I don't have anything.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Further to add to that, except maybe, like it got
an an interior yikes from me, Yeah when I read it.
In nineteen oh three, Roebling edited and published the Journal
of the Reverend Silas, Constant pastor of the Presbyterian Church
at Yorktown, New York, which may seem kind of random
(30:21):
based on all the things we've talked about in her life.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
So far.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
In the preface to this she wrote that she had
once been given a collection of four generations of family
papers which she had burned because they were old and musty,
not realizing when she did that that she was destroying
quote links in the chain connecting the past with the
present that no amount of thought or search could replace.
(30:46):
She said that in editing and publishing this journal it
was an attempt to make amends for that past deed.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Throughout all of this she occasionally returned to the idea
of the bridge, including commenting on various proposals for changes
or modifications, or the building of new bridges. She was
regularly quoted in newspaper articles about the bridge, with that
reporting frequently referencing how involved she had been in its construction.
(31:13):
In her work on the bridge came up in her
own correspondence as well, as she wrote in an eighteen
ninety eight letter to her son, quote, I am still
feeling well enough to stoutly maintain against all critics, including
my own son, that I have more brains, common sense,
and know how generally than have any two engineers, civil
or uncivil. And but for me, the Brooklyn Bridge would
(31:35):
never have had the name Robling in any way connected
with it. I don't know the context for this letter,
but I'm sort of.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Imagining it as maybe their son being like, hey, you're
getting a little older, maybe you should take a step back,
and her being like, Nope, that is some family business
right out in public.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Emily Warren Roebling died at home in Trenton, New Jersey,
on February twenty eighth, eighteen ninety three. A lot of
sources give her cause of death as stomach cancer, although
a few instead cites some kind of muscle weakness. Some
of those claim that this weakness was brought on by
her ruining her health by working on the bridge. Several
(32:21):
New York area newspapers reported on her illness in the
last days of her life, many of them referencing the
role that she had played in the building of the
Brooklyn Bridge.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
While various sources today point out that she did not
have an obituary in The New York Times until twenty eighteen,
when she was featured as part of its Overlooked series.
Obituaries were printed in at least two newspapers on March
first of eighteen ninety three. One was The New York Tribune,
and the other was the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Tribune
(32:52):
described her first and greatest prominence as quote directing the
details of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Eagle
called her quote one of the best known club women
in the country, before saying quote, Missus Roebling's chief claim
to fame lies in the part which she took in
superintending the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Later on this
(33:13):
obituary read quote, she had followed the progress of the
bridge almost as carefully as had her husband, and she
knew almost as much about it as he did. But
it also added quote, the work done by Missus Roebling
at this time was far too great for any woman,
and her health has never been the same since then.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Washington Robling later remarried, and he died in nineteen twenty
six at the age of eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
In nineteen fifty one, a plaque was unveiled at the
Brooklyn Bridge which reads, quote the builders of the Bridge
dedicated to the memory of Emily Warren Robling eighteen forty
three to nineteen oh three, whose faith and courage helped
her stricken husband Colonel Washington A. Roebling ce eighteen thirty
seven to nineteen twenty six complete the construction of this
bridge from the plans of his father Sean A. Robling
(34:01):
ce Eighteen oh six to eighteen sixty nine, who gave
his life to the bridge. Back of every great work
we can find the self sacrificing devotion of a woman.
This tablet erected by the Brooklyn Engineers Club with funds
raised by popular subscription. On May twenty ninth, twenty eighteen,
the block of Columbia Heights, where the Roblings lived in Brooklyn,
(34:21):
was renamed Emily Warren Robling Way. Today there are at
least two children's books about her. They are Secret Engineer,
How Emily Robling Built the Brooklyn Bridge and How Emily
Saved the Bridge The Story of Emily Warren Robling, both
published in twenty nineteen. There's also a novel titled No
Life But This, which came out in twenty twenty. There
(34:44):
is also a book, like a nonfiction book, called Silent Builder,
Emily Warren Robling and the Brooklyn Bridge. To be clear,
I did not get this book for today's episode. The
original edition was published in nineteen eighty four by Association
Faculty Press, and it's one hundred and eighty eight pages long.
Subsequent editions are a lot longer, but were independently published
(35:08):
and just don't seem to be available in many libraries,
so that book exists, I could not get my hands
on it.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Do you have listener mail for us as well? I do?
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I have listener mail.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
This is from Amy and it is about something that
we alluded to in a recent Saturday Classic. But we
know not everyone listens to every episode, so we're just
gonna say it again. Amy wrote our old episodes disappearing. Recently,
my podcast feed Overcast has apparently started removing old episodes.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Is this just me?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Or is this intentional? I've been working through some older
episodes I hadn't heard before, and until recently, the archives
went all the way back to the initial two thousand
and eight episodes. As of today, though the oldest looks
to be from July twenty ten, I've in the sixth
and I think older ones have maybe gradually disappeared. Thanks
Freddy Info. I was hoping to catch up someday, but
(35:58):
maybe that isn't possible anymore, so I wrote back to Amy.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
They answered the question.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I will now answer it for anyone who is experiencing
the same thing as I understand Overcast.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
It pulls from.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
The Apple Podcasts feed of the show and back in
I think October, Apple Podcasts put in a limit of
how many episodes could be in a show's feed to
two thousand episodes. We have more than that, and so
the oldest episodes just progressively drop off as we put
(36:29):
out new ones. I think Overcast actually is sort of
lagging a tiny bit behind Apple in terms of dropping
off the old ones that did seem like there were
just a few more episodes on Overcast than an Apple podcast.
Apple podcasts not the only player with a limit. Many
of them are have you know, have either had limits
(36:50):
for a long time or are putting in new limits.
I totally understand doing this, yeah, because there are continually
more and more podcasts, and we all have continually more
and more episodes. It is not within our control, though,
right that these are decisions that are being made by
Apple and Overcast and whoever else is making podcast players
(37:14):
the whole feed all the way back to two thousand
and eight, at which point it was a very different
show with totally different hosts who have not worked with
us in many, many, many, many years that RSS feed
still has everything in it, and the iHeart the iHeartRadio
website still has everything in it. iHeartRadio app still has
(37:35):
everything in it. There are also other players that still
include entire feeds for all the shows, but since there
is so much variation from one device to another and
one app store to another, we can't really keep up
to date with all of them, right, And I would
(37:56):
not be surprised if more start doing limitters because, as
you said, like it's an industry that continues to grow,
and because it's everyone from like people like us that
work for a company that produces them to people doing
them on their own, Like, there's no way to really
manage how many get published in a given week across
(38:18):
the industry. So the solution for companies that host in
are or feed and are running out of space on
servers or just trying to look forward to a future
where this continues to be a growth industry, they got
to start putting in limiters.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I know it stinks, yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I will also say I know we have sort of
made a thing of having a PhD in SYMHC for
people who have listened to every single episode. That is
something I would only encourage if like you super want
to do it, and if you want to listen to
episodes that are by totally different hosts with a totally
different outlook and a totally different format of the show. Really,
(38:57):
even from the super early ones, which are only often
five or ten minutes long, maybe not five but maybe
more like fifteen.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You're some that are pretty short. I will also say
something super rebellious. Okay, you are one of those people
who wants a stuff you missed in history class, a
PhD in sy m See, I don't know if I
forgot letters. Just buy the shirt. Nobody's gonna check you. No,
we're not checking. Yeah, nobody listen. Our time on this
(39:27):
rock is finite. Do whatever you want that doesn't hurt somebody. Yes,
I'm not gonna quiz you. If I run into you
and see you wearing that shirt, I won't remember all
of them, So super not.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
It is not a challenge coin No.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
If you just feel like you got a lot more
knowledge or you did a lot of work to listen
to a lot of shows, you don't have to do
all of them. For anybody that did do all of them,
please don't feel devalued in this way. I just think
like it's given the changing landscape of availability of things,
it's not worth being too stressed over it.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Correct, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
So if you want to send us a note about
this or any other podcast or history podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com, we're on social media app Missed in History,
you can subscribe to our show as we just said,
on the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere else you'd like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
(40:30):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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