The Story of the Brooklyn Bridge—The Eighth Wonder of the World

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" after its completion. The connection it forged between the massive population centers of Brooklyn and Manhattan forever changed the course of New York City. Here’s The History Guy with the story.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

(00:32):
of the Industrial Age and the coming of age of
the United States and its largest city. Here's the History
Guy with the story.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
May twenty four, 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, which carried us President Chester Arthur and
in New York 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

(01:04):
Island and Brooklyn on Long Island. The headline of the
New York Times that day read two great Cities United,
although the Times gave its relative opinion of those two
great cities the next day when they mentioned that the
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

(01:24):
a thousand of them, whatever fund, occasion to use the
new structure. The carriage carrying President Arthur and Mayor Edson
was not actually the first carriage to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.
That event had occurred ten days earlier. In 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

(01:46):
supposed to represent victory. Missus Warren was said to be
concerned that the bird might pecker tried to escape the carriage.
The bird itself was said to have crowed the whole
way and did not seem to appreciate the role it
had to play in the 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

(02:08):
also to test whether the horse's trotting would make the
bridge wobble. The bridge didn't wobble, but New York City
residents might not have been convinced this to how strong
the bridge was until the following year, when showman Pt
Barham famously walked twenty one elephants and ten camels across
it at the same time. But Missus Robling's presence did
represent some of the significant challenges that were associated with

(02:28):
construction of the great buildings of the nineteenth century. Missus
Roblin's involvement impact again with an accident. While proposals for
a bridge 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

(02:51):
bridges in the United States, such as the five hundred
and thirty five foot Delaware Aqueduct completed in eighteen forty nine.
Suspension 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. Robling had made a proposal for

(03:13):
a bridge between New York City and Brooklyn in eighteen
fifty two. In eighteen sixty seven, the same year that
another of his projects, the sixteen hundred and 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 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,

(03:35):
bribery was involved in the deal. Still, Robling was appointed
chief engineer and 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, Robling was surveying the
location for the bridge when his foot was struck by

(03:56):
a fering. His foot was crossed and several toes had
to be amputated. 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 an until ninteen
twenty eight that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first general

(04:17):
purpose antibiotic which could be used to treat tetanus. Roebling's
death was 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

(04:39):
role securing the defense of Little Roundtop during the eighteen
sixty three Battle 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 towers.
The caissons were massive air type wooden boxes of some
seventeen thousand square feet. They were constructed on land, floated

(05:00):
to the necessary spot on the river, and sunk to
the floor 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 wrists showed in eighteen seventy

(05:22):
when the wooden structure within the Brooklyn Cason caught fire.
Robin was 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, a particularly risks
called caisson disease. The Brooklyn Bridge was not the first
example of caison disease. Doctors as far backs of the
eighteenth century had noticed the deadly form of rheumatism that

(05:42):
occurred with workers who worked in pressurized environments. The illness
was more clearly noted in eighteen seventy one among the
workers working in Cassons building the Saint Louis Eads Bridge.
Twelve men died from the not 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

(06:04):
the body on depressurization. In eighteen seventy three, the project
physician Andrew Smith noted one hundred and twelve cases of
the illness among the caison workers on the Brooklyn Bridge,
eventually resulting in fourteen fatalities. Smith coined the term Caisson disease.
Among those that contracted the condition was Washington Roebling, who
frequently went into the kaisons to supervise work. The painful

(06:26):
condition left him incapacitated and forced to supervise construction from
his bed. His wife, Emily became his intermediary, relating his
instructions to his assistants and reporting on the construction to him.
She became an expert on bridge construction of materials and
navigated the political waters of contracts and 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,

(06:49):
civil or uncivil. While she fought to maintain her husband's
title as chief engineer, she has generally recognized or been
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 Abraham Stephens Hewitt
described the bridge as an everlasting monument to the sacrificing
devotion of a woman and her capacity for higher education,

(07:11):
from which he has been too long disbarred. But the
role that resulted in her carrying the rooster across the
bridge in her carriage also underlied the plight of the
one hundred and twelve men whom doctor Smith had diagnosed
with Casson 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

(07:32):
River Tunnel, 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 penny for pedestrians. More than a

(07:53):
million people paid to cross the bridge in the first
six months that it was open. Perhaps the strangest consequence
of building the Brig Bridge is that the bridge has
become symbolic of a very strange pradud 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.

(08:14):
According to the website New York City Walks, Parker would
create fake documents and fake sales offices and build people
by selling New York City landmarks, including once masquerading as
Ulysses Grant's grandson and selling Grants two. The sailing plant
was a possibility for collecting tolls. While the bridge opened
with tolls, the pedestrian tolls were repealed in eighteen ninety

(08:35):
one and the 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

(08:55):
would stop the new owners from setting up toll booths
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 Sing Sing 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

(09:16):
and was eulogized recently 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 Won described it, whose granite towers and thick steel
cables have inspired countless artists, musicians, engineers, and architects. Still today,

(09:38):
according to the Department of Transportation, more than one hundred
thousand cars, four thousand cyclists, and ten thousand pedestrians crossed
the bridge daily.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
And great job is always by Greg Hanglo 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. His street 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,

(10:10):
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.
The story of the Brooklyn Bridge here on our American

(10:33):
Stories