January 3, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the Brooklyn Bridge, with its unprecedented length and two stately towers, was dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world.” The connection it provided between the massive population centers of Brooklyn and Manhattan changed the course of New York City forever. Here's the History Guy with the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with our American stories. And our
next story comes to us from a man who is
simply known as the History Guy. His videos are watched
by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.
The History Guy has also heard here regularly on our
American stories. The Brooklyn Bridge represented the growth and might
(00:33):
of the Industrial Age and the coming of age of
the United States and its largest city. And we're telling
this story because in this day, in eighteen seventy, construction
on the Brooklyn Bridge began. Here's the History Guy with
the story.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Wed twenty fourth, eighteen eighty three, one of the great
marvels of the Industrial Age was open to the public
for the very first time. A procession of twenty four coaches,
first water Witch carried toist President Chester Arthur and your
city Mayor Franklin Edson across the six thousand, sixteen foot
suspension bridge, one and a half times longer than any
suspension bridge that had been built to that time, across
the East River between New York City on Manhattan Island
(01:11):
and Brooklyn on Long Island. The headline of the New
York Times that day read two Great Cities United. Although
the Times gave it relative opinion of those two great
cities the next day when they mentioned that that residents
of Brooklyn would be happy to avoid a sometimes difficult
ferry ride, But the residents of New York City had
no great cause for celebration, as not one in a
thousand of them, whatever find occasion to use the new structure.
(01:36):
A carriage carrying the President Arthur and Mayor Edson was
not actually the first carriage to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.
That event occurred ten days earlier, and the honor of
being the first across the bridge in a carriage went
to Emily Warren Roebling, wife of the Chief Engineer. In
her lap, she carried a white rooster, which was supposed
to represent victory. Missus Warren was said to be concerned
that the bird, Mike Pecker, tried to escape the carriage.
(01:59):
The bird itself was had to have crowed the whole way,
and did not seem to appreciate the role it had
to play in a spectacle. The purpose of the crossing
was not merely to give Missus Roebling and her rooster
the honor of being the first across the bridge, which
she played such a significant role in building, but also
to test whether the horse's trotting would make the bridge wobble.
The bridge didn't wobble, but New York City Residence might
(02:20):
not have been convinced as to how strong the bridge
was until the following year, when showman Pt Barham famously
walked twenty one elephants and ten campmels across it at
the same time. But Missus Roebling's presence did represent some
of the significant challenges that were associated with construction of
the great buildings of the nineteenth century. Missus Roebling's involvement
impact began with an accident. While proposals for a bridge
(02:43):
across the East River between New York City and Brooklyn
were made at least as early as eighteen hundred, the
design that would become the bridge that opened in eighteen
eighty three was the brainchild of German civil engineer John
Augustus Roebling. Robling had built important but smaller suspension bridges
in the United States, such as the five hundred and thirty
five foot Delaware Aqueduct completed in eighteen forty nine. Suspension
(03:04):
Bridges of this size were still relatively new, especially in
the United States, and this project would be extraordinary. The
New York Times noted the art of building these area
structures was then in its infancy here, and mister John
robling stood at the head of the engineers who made
it a study. Roblington made a proposal for a bridge
between New York City and Brooklyn in eighteen fifty two.
In eighteen sixty seven, the same year that another of
(03:24):
his projects, the sixteen hundred forty two foot Cincinnati Covington
Bridge spending the Ohio River, was completed, the New York
State Senate passed a bill that allowed the bridge to
be built. A New York in Brooklyn Bridge Company was incorporated,
authorizing the sale of five million dollars in public bonds
to fund the bridge. By some accounts, bribery was involved
in the deal. Still, Roblin was appointed chief engineer and
(03:46):
began perfecting the plan for construction. Construction of that era
was done by hand, and, as can still be true today,
included a measure of risk in a sign of the
nature of the risks of the era. On June eighteenth,
eighteen sixty nine, Roebling was surveying the location for the
bridge when his foot was struck by a fairing. His
foot was crushed and several toes had to be amputated.
(04:07):
He died twenty four days later of tetanus. His death,
the first of more than two dozen associated with the
construction of the bridge, represented the risks of the time.
It wasn't until nineteen twenty four that an effective tetanus
vaccine was produced. It was until nighteen twenty eight that
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, in the first general purpose antibiotic
which could be used to treat tetanus. Roebling's death was
(04:27):
a stark reminder that the Brooklyn Bridge was built at
a time when virtually any injury could result in a
likely life threatening infection. After John Robling's death, his thirty
two year old son, Washington Augustus Roebling was appointed chief engineer.
A Civil War veteran who had built suspension bridges for
the Union Army and played a significant role securing the
defense of Little Roundtop during the eighteen sixty three Battle
(04:48):
of Gettysburg. Washington had been assistant chief engineer, and after
his father's death, continued to improve the design. Among his
designs were the two enormous caissons which would be used
to create the foundation for the bridge's to The caisons
were massive air tight wooden boxes of some seventeen thousand
square feet. They were constructed on land, floated to the
necessary spot on the river, and sunk to the floor
(05:09):
of the river. They were then filled with compressed air
and workers were sitting down into them, hand digging the
river bed until the cason reached bedrock or, on the
New York side, compacted sand. The cason would then be
filled with concrete and become the foundation for the nine
hundred thousand ton suspension towers. It was cramped, uncomfortable and
dangerous work. The rists showed in eighteen seventy when the
wooden structure within the Brooklyn Cason caught fire. Rowland was
(05:32):
eventually forced to flood the cason to put the fire out,
and a delayed construction for several months. But there were
more risks. Among them are particularly risks called Caisson disease.
The Brooklyn Bridge was not the first example of Caisson disease.
Doctors as far backs of the eighteenth century had noticed
the deadly form of rheumatism that occurred with workers who
worked in pressurized environments. The illness was more clearly noted
(05:53):
in eighteen seventy one, among the workers working in Caissons
building the Saint Louis Eads Bridge, twelve men died from
the night well understood condition whose characteristic painful symptoms resulted
in the name the Bends. The cause was decompression sickness,
a condition that is the result of dissolved gases coming
out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization.
(06:13):
In eighteen seventy three, the project physician Andrew Smith noted
one hundred twelve cases of the illness among the cason
workers on the Brooklyn Bridge, eventually resulting in fourteen fatalities.
Smith coined the term Caisson disease. Among those that contracted
the condition was Washington Roeblick, who frequently went into the
chaissons to supervise work. The painful condition left him incapacitated
(06:34):
and forced to supervise construction from his bed. His wife,
Emily became his intermediary, relating his instructions to his assistance
and reporting on the construction to him. She became an
expert on bridge construction of materials and navigated the political
waters of contracts in the board of Trustees. Should later
write to her son that I have more brains, common sense,
and know how generally than have any two engineers, civil
(06:56):
or uncivil. While she fought to maintain her husband's title
ast Sheef engineer, she has jellally recognized for being the
de facto chief engineer of the project through its completion.
Her experience represented the difficulty faced by women in the
nineteenth century. At the bridge opening, speaker Abrahm Stephens Hewitt
described the bridge as an everlasting monument to the sacrificing
devotion of a woman and her capacity for higher education,
(07:17):
from which he has been too long this barred, but
the role that resulted in her tearing the rooster across
the bridge in her carriage also unterlied the plight of
the one hundred twelve men whom doctor Smith had diagnosed
with Caisson sickness. The condition today called decompression sickness can
be effectively prevented with careful decompression procedures. In eighteen ninety,
an airlock was used during the construction of the Hudson
(07:38):
River Tundel, an innovation that would eventually virtually eliminate the
condition that afflicted Washington Robeling for the rest of his life,
but The completion of construction did not end the peculiar
risks of the bridge. The structure, a symbol of modern city,
also demonstrated the problems of urbanization. The crowds coming to
see the monument to modernism were huge, even at a
toll of one pity for pedestrians. Million people paid to
(08:00):
cross the bridge in the first six months that it
was open. Perhaps the straightest consequence of building the Brooklyn
Bridge is that the bridge has become symbolic of a
very strange product, characterized in the line if you believe that,
then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
The line is not merely hyperbole. It refers to a
notorious con man named George C. Parker. According to the
(08:21):
website New York City Walks, Parker would create fake documents
and fake sales offices, and built people by selling New
York City landmarks, including once masquerading as Ulysses Grant's grandson
and selling Grants two. The seiling PLI was a possibility
for collecting tolls. While the bridge opened with tolls, the
pedestrian tolls were repealed in eighteen ninety one and the
(08:41):
vehicle tolls in nineteen eleven. Parker would purport to sell
the right to operate tolls on the bridge. New York
City Walks explains his greatest con was selling the Brooklyn Bridge.
Legend claimed that he sold it at least twice a week,
but he did sell it at least several times, including
at least once for fifty thousand dollars. The new owner
would discover that he was the victim of a con
when the New York City Police officers would stop the
(09:02):
new owners from setting up tolbooths in the middle of
the bridge. Well. George Parker has sometimes been called the
greatest con man that ever lived. He couldn't have been
that great because he kept getting caught. On his third conviction,
that judge sent him to New York's Seen Seeing Prison
for life. The Brooklyn Bridge has come to be a
symbol of the city. In their obituary for Emily Roebling,
who died in nineteen oh three and was eulogized recently
(09:24):
in their series on people who were overlooked at the
time of their death, the New York Times wrote the
Brooklyn Bridge would go on to become, at least according
to lore, the most photographed structure in the world. A
gateway to that shining city, as Thomas wiff Went described it,
whose granite towers and thick steel cables have inspired countless artists, musicians, engineers,
and architects still today. According to the Department of Transportation,
(09:46):
more than one hundred thousand cars, four thousand cyclists, and
ten thousand pedestrians crossed the bridge daily.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And great job is always by Greg Hangler and the
production special thanks also to The History Guy. If you
want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his
YouTube channel, The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.
A monument to modernism, a gateway to the city. A
million people paid to cross that bridge in its first year,
(10:16):
but you can cross it for free today. One of
only a few bridges in the city you can cross
for free and by all means. The next time you
visit Manhattan and cross over to the Borough of Brooklyn
on foot, walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. It's stunning. It's
one of the most beautiful things you can do on
your visit to one of the greatest cities in the world.
(10:36):
The story of the Brooklyn Bridge, which began construction on
this day in eighteen seventy. Here on our American stories,
And we continue here with our American stories. And our
next story comes to us from a man who is
simply known as the History Guy. His videos are watched
by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.
The History Guy has also heard here regularly on our
American stories. The Brooklyn Bridge represented the growth and might
(00:33):
of the Industrial Age and the coming of age of
the United States and its largest city. And we're telling
this story because in this day, in eighteen seventy, construction
on the Brooklyn Bridge began. Here's the History Guy with
the story.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Wed twenty fourth, eighteen eighty three, one of the great
marvels of the Industrial Age was open to the public
for the very first time. A procession of twenty four coaches,
first water Witch carried toist President Chester Arthur and your
city Mayor Franklin Edson across the six thousand, sixteen foot
suspension bridge, one and a half times longer than any
suspension bridge that had been built to that time, across
the East River between New York City on Manhattan Island
(01:11):
and Brooklyn on Long Island. The headline of the New
York Times that day read two Great Cities United. Although
the Times gave it relative opinion of those two great
cities the next day when they mentioned that that residents
of Brooklyn would be happy to avoid a sometimes difficult
ferry ride, But the residents of New York City had
no great cause for celebration, as not one in a
thousand of them, whatever find occasion to use the new structure.
(01:36):
A carriage carrying the President Arthur and Mayor Edson was
not actually the first carriage to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.
That event occurred ten days earlier, and the honor of
being the first across the bridge in a carriage went
to Emily Warren Roebling, wife of the Chief Engineer. In
her lap, she carried a white rooster, which was supposed
to represent victory. Missus Warren was said to be concerned
that the bird, Mike Pecker, tried to escape the carriage.
(01:59):
The bird itself was had to have crowed the whole way,
and did not seem to appreciate the role it had
to play in a spectacle. The purpose of the crossing
was not merely to give Missus Roebling and her rooster
the honor of being the first across the bridge, which
she played such a significant role in building, but also
to test whether the horse's trotting would make the bridge wobble.
The bridge didn't wobble, but New York City Residence might
(02:20):
not have been convinced as to how strong the bridge
was until the following year, when showman Pt Barham famously
walked twenty one elephants and ten campmels across it at
the same time. But Missus Roebling's presence did represent some
of the significant challenges that were associated with construction of
the great buildings of the nineteenth century. Missus Roebling's involvement
impact began with an accident. While proposals for a bridge
(02:43):
across the East River between New York City and Brooklyn
were made at least as early as eighteen hundred, the
design that would become the bridge that opened in eighteen
eighty three was the brainchild of German civil engineer John
Augustus Roebling. Robling had built important but smaller suspension bridges
in the United States, such as the five hundred and thirty
five foot Delaware Aqueduct completed in eighteen forty nine. Suspension
(03:04):
Bridges of this size were still relatively new, especially in
the United States, and this project would be extraordinary. The
New York Times noted the art of building these area
structures was then in its infancy here, and mister John
robling stood at the head of the engineers who made
it a study. Roblington made a proposal for a bridge
between New York City and Brooklyn in eighteen fifty two.
In eighteen sixty seven, the same year that another of
(03:24):
his projects, the sixteen hundred forty two foot Cincinnati Covington
Bridge spending the Ohio River, was completed, the New York
State Senate passed a bill that allowed the bridge to
be built. A New York in Brooklyn Bridge Company was incorporated,
authorizing the sale of five million dollars in public bonds
to fund the bridge. By some accounts, bribery was involved
in the deal. Still, Roblin was appointed chief engineer and
(03:46):
began perfecting the plan for construction. Construction of that era
was done by hand, and, as can still be true today,
included a measure of risk in a sign of the
nature of the risks of the era. On June eighteenth,
eighteen sixty nine, Roebling was surveying the location for the
bridge when his foot was struck by a fairing. His
foot was crushed and several toes had to be amputated.
(04:07):
He died twenty four days later of tetanus. His death,
the first of more than two dozen associated with the
construction of the bridge, represented the risks of the time.
It wasn't until nineteen twenty four that an effective tetanus
vaccine was produced. It was until nighteen twenty eight that
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, in the first general purpose antibiotic
which could be used to treat tetanus. Roebling's death was
(04:27):
a stark reminder that the Brooklyn Bridge was built at
a time when virtually any injury could result in a
likely life threatening infection. After John Robling's death, his thirty
two year old son, Washington Augustus Roebling was appointed chief engineer.
A Civil War veteran who had built suspension bridges for
the Union Army and played a significant role securing the
defense of Little Roundtop during the eighteen sixty three Battle
(04:48):
of Gettysburg. Washington had been assistant chief engineer, and after
his father's death, continued to improve the design. Among his
designs were the two enormous caissons which would be used
to create the foundation for the bridge's to The caisons
were massive air tight wooden boxes of some seventeen thousand
square feet. They were constructed on land, floated to the
necessary spot on the river, and sunk to the floor
(05:09):
of the river. They were then filled with compressed air
and workers were sitting down into them, hand digging the
river bed until the cason reached bedrock or, on the
New York side, compacted sand. The cason would then be
filled with concrete and become the foundation for the nine
hundred thousand ton suspension towers. It was cramped, uncomfortable and
dangerous work. The rists showed in eighteen seventy when the
wooden structure within the Brooklyn Cason caught fire. Rowland was
(05:32):
eventually forced to flood the cason to put the fire out,
and a delayed construction for several months. But there were
more risks. Among them are particularly risks called Caisson disease.
The Brooklyn Bridge was not the first example of Caisson disease.
Doctors as far backs of the eighteenth century had noticed
the deadly form of rheumatism that occurred with workers who
worked in pressurized environments. The illness was more clearly noted
(05:53):
in eighteen seventy one, among the workers working in Caissons
building the Saint Louis Eads Bridge, twelve men died from
the night well understood condition whose characteristic painful symptoms resulted
in the name the Bends. The cause was decompression sickness,
a condition that is the result of dissolved gases coming
out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization.
(06:13):
In eighteen seventy three, the project physician Andrew Smith noted
one hundred twelve cases of the illness among the cason
workers on the Brooklyn Bridge, eventually resulting in fourteen fatalities.
Smith coined the term Caisson disease. Among those that contracted
the condition was Washington Roeblick, who frequently went into the
chaissons to supervise work. The painful condition left him incapacitated
(06:34):
and forced to supervise construction from his bed. His wife,
Emily became his intermediary, relating his instructions to his assistance
and reporting on the construction to him. She became an
expert on bridge construction of materials and navigated the political
waters of contracts in the board of Trustees. Should later
write to her son that I have more brains, common sense,
and know how generally than have any two engineers, civil
(06:56):
or uncivil. While she fought to maintain her husband's title
ast Sheef engineer, she has jellally recognized for being the
de facto chief engineer of the project through its completion.
Her experience represented the difficulty faced by women in the
nineteenth century. At the bridge opening, speaker Abrahm Stephens Hewitt
described the bridge as an everlasting monument to the sacrificing
devotion of a woman and her capacity for higher education,
(07:17):
from which he has been too long this barred, but
the role that resulted in her tearing the rooster across
the bridge in her carriage also unterlied the plight of
the one hundred twelve men whom doctor Smith had diagnosed
with Caisson sickness. The condition today called decompression sickness can
be effectively prevented with careful decompression procedures. In eighteen ninety,
an airlock was used during the construction of the Hudson
(07:38):
River Tundel, an innovation that would eventually virtually eliminate the
condition that afflicted Washington Robeling for the rest of his life,
but The completion of construction did not end the peculiar
risks of the bridge. The structure, a symbol of modern city,
also demonstrated the problems of urbanization. The crowds coming to
see the monument to modernism were huge, even at a
toll of one pity for pedestrians. Million people paid to
(08:00):
cross the bridge in the first six months that it
was open. Perhaps the straightest consequence of building the Brooklyn
Bridge is that the bridge has become symbolic of a
very strange product, characterized in the line if you believe that,
then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
The line is not merely hyperbole. It refers to a
notorious con man named George C. Parker. According to the
(08:21):
website New York City Walks, Parker would create fake documents
and fake sales offices, and built people by selling New
York City landmarks, including once masquerading as Ulysses Grant's grandson
and selling Grants two. The seiling PLI was a possibility
for collecting tolls. While the bridge opened with tolls, the
pedestrian tolls were repealed in eighteen ninety one and the
(08:41):
vehicle tolls in nineteen eleven. Parker would purport to sell
the right to operate tolls on the bridge. New York
City Walks explains his greatest con was selling the Brooklyn Bridge.
Legend claimed that he sold it at least twice a week,
but he did sell it at least several times, including
at least once for fifty thousand dollars. The new owner
would discover that he was the victim of a con
when the New York City Police officers would stop the
(09:02):
new owners from setting up tolbooths in the middle of
the bridge. Well. George Parker has sometimes been called the
greatest con man that ever lived. He couldn't have been
that great because he kept getting caught. On his third conviction,
that judge sent him to New York's Seen Seeing Prison
for life. The Brooklyn Bridge has come to be a
symbol of the city. In their obituary for Emily Roebling,
who died in nineteen oh three and was eulogized recently
(09:24):
in their series on people who were overlooked at the
time of their death, the New York Times wrote the
Brooklyn Bridge would go on to become, at least according
to lore, the most photographed structure in the world. A
gateway to that shining city, as Thomas wiff Went described it,
whose granite towers and thick steel cables have inspired countless artists, musicians, engineers,
and architects still today. According to the Department of Transportation,
(09:46):
more than one hundred thousand cars, four thousand cyclists, and
ten thousand pedestrians crossed the bridge daily.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And great job is always by Greg Hangler and the
production special thanks also to The History Guy. If you
want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his
YouTube channel, The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.
A monument to modernism, a gateway to the city. A
million people paid to cross that bridge in its first year,
(10:16):
but you can cross it for free today. One of
only a few bridges in the city you can cross
for free and by all means. The next time you
visit Manhattan and cross over to the Borough of Brooklyn
on foot, walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. It's stunning. It's
one of the most beautiful things you can do on
your visit to one of the greatest cities in the world.
(10:36):
The story of the Brooklyn Bridge, which began construction on
this day in eighteen seventy. Here on our American stories,
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