Brooklyn Bridge Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, spanning the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn.
6016 feet (1834 m) long, it was opened for use on May 24, 1883, after 14 years of construction. On that first day a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet (486 meters). The bridge cost $18 million to build and approximately 27 people died during its construction. A week after the opening, on May 30, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede which crushed twelve people.
At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world — fifty percent longer than any previously built, and has become a treasured landmark. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to display its architectural features. The architecture style is Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers.
The bridge was designed by an architectural firm owned by John Augustus Roebling in Trenton, New Jersey. Roebling and his firm had built smaller suspension bridges, such as the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio and the Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, that served as the engineering prototypes for the final design.
As construction was beginning, Roebling's foot was seriously injured in an accident; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus. His son, Washington, succeeded him, but was stricken with caisson disease (decompression sickness), due to working in compressed air with the sand hogs, and was only capable of limited speech or movement. Washington's wife, Emily Warren Roebling, trained herself in engineering so she could communicate his wishes to the builders. Washington Roebling was unable to leave his home and watched the construction through a telescope.
At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950's - well after after the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the 1940. It is also fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and had been replaced. This is also in spite of the nefarious substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by a contractor - by the time it was discovered it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand.
At various times, the bridge has carried horses and trolley traffic; at present, it has lanes for motor vehicles, and a separate level for pedestrians and bicycles.
References to "selling the Brooklyn Bridge" abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. For example, "If you believe that, I have a wonderful bargain for you . . ." However, see also Victor Lustig.
The bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1977 and on March 24, 1983 the bridge was designated a National Historic Engineering Landmark.
The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in a film by Ken Burns.