the great bridge

Author and historian David McCullough has swept me off my feet again, this time with The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

photo credit: the Internet

It is the story of progress, a peek into the mid-19th century growth of New York and Brooklyn. It is the story of the Gilded Age and the crooked politics that often reigned supreme. It is an instruction manual detailing theories and practices in engineering. It is the history of hard work, integrity in the face of greed, physical and mental anguish and devotion, and the instinctive genius of a man named Washington Roebling. But first and foremost, it is the story of the building of the great Brooklyn Bridge.

photo credit: the Internet

"Even before the bridge was opened it had become a symbol of something impossible to define that made New York different from every other city on earth. [...] On the one hand it was a vaulting avenue over the river, defying space and gravity like some weightless natural phenomenon ('...high over all the Great Bridge swept across the sky,' a novelist would write), but it was also fixed, deep-rooted. It was as though the two cities might drift apart were the bridge not there. The bridge kept things in place. It belonged."
--David McCullough

A few factoids about the Brooklyn Bridge:

• The bridge was designed by John A. Roebling, but, upon his death a few months before bridge construction began, was overseen by his son, Washington A. Roebling, the great Chief Engineer.
• It was the largest suspension bridge project ever attempted up to this time.
  
• It was begun in 1869 and took fourteen continuous (and long) years to build at a cost of $15 million.
• The caissons, used to form the foundations of the towers, rest beneath the East River on bedrock.
• The roadway over the river is supported by four enormous cables, along with supporting diagonal wire stays.
• Washington Roebling succumbed to the caisson sickness (also known as the bends) a few years into the project and became so crippled, he had to manage the remainder of the construction off-site. While he was still able to provide the brains behind the project, his devoted wife, Emily, provided the footwork, working closely with his assistants as a liaison.
  

photo credit: yours truly

"[...] Possibly its enduring appeal may rest on its physical solidity and permanence, the very reverse of rootlessness. It says, perhaps, as does nothing else built by Americans before or since, that we had come to stay."
--David McCullough

I was so emotionally wrapped up in the story of the building of this magnificent bridge that by the epilogue I was weepy (which, I suppose, is to be expected from me, considering that I am someone pre-disposed to tears). As soon as these blustery November wind gusts die down a little, I'd like to go back for another walk across the bridge. For those of you who will be joining me sometime in the future for a stroll along its pedestrian walkway, please know that, thanks to my reading of this fabulous book, your tour will be both historically and technically educational.

photo credit: my talented sister, Katie

"It was a place to go on stifling summer evenings, to take some exercise to and from work, to walk the baby, to watch the gulls, to find relief from the city. Its promenade was and would remain one of the most exhilarating walks on the continent. To be on the promenade of the Brooklyn Bridge on a fine day, about halfway between the two towers, looking over the harbor and the city skyline, was to be at one of the two or three most soul-stirring spots in America, like standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon."
--David McCullough

illustration credit: the Internet

"...The impression upon the visitor is one of astonishment that grows with every visit. No one who has been upon it can ever forget it."
- Seth Low, mayor of Brooklyn, 1883