Manhattan Side of the Brooklyn Bridge

by Lilliana Mendez

Title

Manhattan Side of the Brooklyn Bridge

Artist

Lilliana Mendez

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

The Brooklyn Bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio.

While conducting surveys for the bridge project, Roebling sustained a crush injury to his foot when a ferry pinned it against a piling. After amputation of his crushed toes he developed a tetanus infection which left him incapacitated and soon resulted in his death, not long after he had placed his 32-year-old son Washington Roebling in charge of the project.Washington Roebling also suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of decompression sickness shortly after the beginning of construction on January 3, 1870.This condition, first called "caisson disease" by the project physician Andrew Smith, afflicted many of the workers working within the caissons.[13][14] Roebling's debilitating condition left him unable to physically supervise the construction firsthand.

Roebling conducted the entire construction from his apartment with a view of the work, designing and redesigning caissons and other equipment. He was aided by his wife Emily Warren Roebling who provided the critical written link between her husband and the engineers on site. Under her husband's guidance, Emily studied higher mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction.[16][17][18] She spent the next 11 years assisting Washington Roebling, helping to supervise the bridge's construction. When iron probes underneath the caisson for the Manhattan tower found the bedrock to be even deeper than expected, Roebling halted construction due to the increased risk of decompression sickness. He later deemed the aggregate overlying the bedrock 30 feet (9 m) below it to be firm enough to support the tower base, and construction continued.[19]

The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. The granite blocks were quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the Bodwell Granite Company, and delivered from Maine to New York by schooner.[20]

The bridge was built with numerous passageways and compartments in its anchorages. New York City rented out the large vaults under the bridge's Manhattan anchorage in order to fund the bridge. Opened in 1876, the vaults were used to store wine, as they were always at 60 �F (16 �C).[21] This was called the "Blue Grotto" because of a shrine to the Virgin Mary next to an opening at the entrance. When New York visited one of the cellars about 102 years later, in 1978, it discovered, on the wall, a "fading inscription" reading: "Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long."[22]

The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in the 1972 book The Great Bridge by David McCullough[15] and Brooklyn Bridge (1981), the first PBS documentary film ever made by Ken Burns.[23] Burns drew heavily on McCullough's book for the film and used him as narrator. It is also described in Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, a BBC docudrama series with accompanying book.

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January 31st, 2015

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