92: The Brooklyn Bridge, or the Story of the Roebling Family 01:08:11

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It's a cold winter's day, either 1852 or 1853, and New York City is as full of life as ever. You might even say it's overflowing. This once small Dutch colony on the southern tip of Manhattan Island now occupies the whole of the lower island's roughly two-mile-wide landmass, situated between the Hudson and East Rivers. Lower Manhattan is completely packed with buildings, many of which tower four or five stories into the air.

The tallest structure, Trinity Church down on lower Broadway, peaks at an astounding 284 feet. Various accents which, depending on the neighborhood, might be American, German, or an Irish brogue cut through the air as native-born and immigrant alike compete against the sounds of clopping hooves and the carts, carriages, and rail cars they pull along the city's cobblestone and mud streets. With over half a million people, New York is now the largest city in the nation by a long shot.

Nor is neighboring Brooklyn too far behind. Located just south and east of Manhattan Island on the western edge of Long Island, Brooklyn's 100,000 residents make it the United States' seventh largest city. That's right, two of America's top 10 biggest cities are right next to each other, only separated by the wide and deep East River.

Little surprise then that numerous steam-powered ferry boats churned through the waters transporting several tens of thousands of passengers, particularly Brooklynites working in NYC, between the two metropolises on the daily. And today, some of those passengers include John Roebling, his teenage son Washington, and possibly John's wife, Johanna. I can't tell you why the Roeblings are traveling between the currently separate and distinct cities of New York and Brooklyn. That is lost to history.

But knowing John, it's work related. The German immigrant and engineer with hollow cheeks, heavy brow, and light complexion spends his every waking moment productively. If a person is so much as five minutes late for an appointment with him, John cancels it. This self-assured builder of great works who stares men into cowering and is said to have accomplished more in his life than ten others combined has never taken what you and I might call a sick day, personal day, or even a weekend.

So whatever is compelling John, maybe Johanna, but certainly Washington to cross the East River, there's a good chance it's business, not pleasure. The Roebling step onto a ferry boat. While we don't know which one it is, it's likely a steam-powered vessel measuring 150 feet or more in length and able to carry 600 passengers. People crowd on board and it disembarks, joining the other dozen or so such ferries and large cargo ships thronging the waters.

Indeed, crossing the highly trafficked East River, which isn't really a river so much as a saltwater tidal strait with eddies, whirlpools, and opposing tides, can be a treacherous thing. It's even worse on a frigid day like this one, with ice chunks flowing and bobbing in the water. But what else can be done in such a situation? The only way to reach Brooklyn is on a ferry boat. It isn't long before some of these large chunks of ice appear right in Busset's path.

The captain undoubtedly tries to navigate the boat through, but he can't. About halfway across the East River, the vessel gets wedged into the ice or otherwise cut off and is left adrift without any path forward. Everyone on this ferry is stuck smack dab in the middle of the nearly frozen over waterway. John Roebling is seething, but not because of the extreme cold he's left in or the danger of being stranded in these hypothermic waters.

This man who values his time so deeply he won't take a five minute late meeting is simply galled at being stuck. There are things to do, but here he is at the mercy of the weather and the ferry boat. And all he can do is wait and watch as the minutes, then hours pass and the sun moves westward across the sky. But he won't just wait. John waits for no one in business and he sure as hell won't let this delayed ferry boat prevent him from being productive.

Rather than continue stewing, this gifted, industrious engineer studies the shores of Manhattan and Long Island. It's in this moment, or so the story goes, that he envisions it. Standing on the boat's deck with his son Washington next to him, John sees, then and there, a bridge in his mind's eye.

While the bridge over the East River has been dreamt of, yet thought impossible for half a century, John is confident that a suspension bridge supported by two massive stone towers can span these turbulent ice-choked waters. And with such a bridge, he'll never have to risk his life or time on a ferry boat again. After an untold number of hours, the Roeblings finally make it back to shore. John returns to his busy, industrious life of building bridges and aqueducts across the nation.

But as the years pass and the nation goes to war with itself, the German-American engineer's desire to build this bridge won't leave him. Years from now, John Roebling and his son Washington will return to undertake the Herculean task of connecting lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. They'll do so determined to succeed or die trying. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story.

Today, we witness an incredible feat, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a tale filled with heroism, achievement, corruption, death, you name it. But as I'm keeping this mind-blowing engineering accomplishment to one episode, I'm going to focus on the story of the Roebling family.

Don't get me wrong, all those other components will come to bear as we dig up boulders and underwater air chambers, lay hundreds of tons of stone, and get a small taste of late 19th century New York's corrupt politics. But the Brooklyn Bridge wouldn't be what it is if the Roeblings hadn't given their brilliance and lives to this East River crossing. Specifically, I'm talking about three family members. John Roebling, his eldest son, Washington, and Washington's wife, Emily.

So to that end, let's head back several decades to the Germanic Kingdom of Prussia, meet a young John Roebling, then follow his path as he immigrates to the United States and develops the unique skills needed to envision this thought-to-be-impossible bridge. Here we go. Rewind. Born on June 12, 1806, in Prussia's relatively quiet town of Mühlhausen, John Roebling, or Johann as he's currently known, so we'll call him that for now,

is quite simply a brilliant child. The child blows through the village's public school curriculum and is soon sent to nearby Erfurt, where he masters trigonometry, surveying, and is pushed to think critically and analytically. Graduating from here at 17 years old, Johann is clearly a candidate for the most prestigious engineering school in the world, the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin. The cost of such an education is significant.

more than a humble tobacco shopkeeper like his father, with still three more children to raise, could typically afford. No ill will intended, but were it left to him, this may have been the end of this wunderkind's rise. Fortunately, it won't be his call. As the future, yet unborn, American Roebling children will all know, it's Johan's mother, Frederica, who puts her foot down.

A determined woman whose own intelligence outshines her husband's in a big way. She scrimps, saves, and manages to pull together the money needed to continue educating her young Johann. Indeed, it's entirely to her credit that the teenage Roebling boy makes his way to the Prussian capital of Berlin and attends its prestigious Polytechnic Institute.

Here, Johann studies bridge construction, hydraulics, and architecture. You know, all the things we'd expect from the man who'd later take on a Brooklyn Bridge. And oh, does he love bridges. He's absolutely fascinated, however, with suspension bridges specifically, and delighted to learn that one is being built over the Regnitz River at Bamberg in the neighboring Germanic kingdom of Bavaria.

Johann makes his own little pilgrimage to it and revels in the brilliance of this engineering feat, using four iron chains to support the bridge. It leaves a lasting impression on the young, budding engineer. But Johann isn't just about what we will call stem fields in the 21st century. While at the Polytechnic Institute, he also studies under Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,

Yes, that Hegel, as in the philosopher whose dialectics will terrify 21st century undergrads taking a general ed humanities course. Johann Roebling quickly becomes one of the great philosopher's favorite students. His absolute favorite, in fact, if we take Roebling biographer D.B. Steinman at his word. Further, Roebling family lore credits Hegel with planting the seeds of immigration in his young pupil's mind by calling the United States...

"A land of hope for all who are wearied of the historical armory of old Europe." Whether the family tales are true or not, Johann is growing weary of Prussia. Graduating with honors as a full-fledged civil engineer at the age of 20, this talented mathematician, well-read philosopher, gifted pianist and flutist increasingly sees his native land as oppressive and bureaucratic.

This isn't terribly surprising. The French Revolution and its ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity are still causing quite a stir across the continent, and European monarchies, like Prussia, are becoming more autocratic as they try to put that genie back in the bottle. Thus, even as early 20s Johann builds roads for the government, he's less than enthralled with it.

He complains that nothing can be done in Prussia without first having an army of government counselors, ministers, and other functionaries deliberate about it for 10 years. Nor is he a fan of the kingdom's unbearable taxes. So when a childhood friend back in Mühlhausen returns from visiting the United States and assures Johann it is truly a land where success is derived from talent, not aristocracy, our budding engineer is sold.

He will immigrate to the United States. And though Johann is doing well enough at this point, his supportive mother can't seem to help once again saving all her pennies to give him and his brother Carl the best send-off possible. She says goodbye to them in the port city of Bremen as they, Johann's convincing friend, and almost 50 others from their hometown that the brothers are leading to the new world to build their own little community board the August Edward on May 22nd, 1831.

It's the last time the mother and sons will ever see or communicate with each other. Friderica will die of a heart attack before her boys even set foot on American soil. The August Edward arrives at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 6th, 1831. Johan is sure this is the land of promise he's been seeking. He writes,

Every American, even when he is poor and must serve others, feels his innate rights as a man. What a contrast to the oppressed German population. Yes, he's finally free of a world where status is determined by endless ranks and an aristocracy to which he doesn't belong. At the same time, Johann realizes that not all enjoy the same freedom. He laments that, Slavery is the greatest cancerous affliction from which the United States are suffering.

The republic is branded by it before the eyes of the civilized world. It is hoped that slavery will be abolished little by little. Refusing to settle in a slave state, Johann and his brother Karl lead their small group of 50 or so Germans into western Pennsylvania. They then purchased land and found their own little farming community, Saxenburg.

Johann, or John as the enthusiastic immigrant will call himself in this new land, builds a good life out here in the western wilds of the Quaker state. Sure, the ground is clay, and few in his community actually know how to farm, but this industrious band of immigrants turned American farmers works hard, and their labors pay off, just as John would expect in this land of opportunity. Between their successful farms and more waves of German immigrants joining them, Saxenburg turns into a thriving little town.

John even finds a spouse. In 1836, he marries a fellow Mühlhausen transplant, Johanna or Johanna Herting. The young couple's first child is born only a year later in 1837. Of course, we already met this kid in the opening of this episode. That's right. This is Washington, the boy who will get stuck with his industrious father and maybe mother on an East River ferry 15 years from now.

We might call 1837 a transformative year for John. In addition to becoming a father, or perhaps because of that, he feels the need to move on from farming. Don't get me wrong, he's appreciated acclimatizing to America by Americaning in the most American way, which, in the 19th century, is still farming. I'm sure you've picked up on his love for his adopted homeland. But the intellectual engineer yearns to build things and provide more than the basics for his family.

Furthermore, as much as the death of his brother Carl this same year causes him grief, the loss of his Saxenburg founding sibling also lessens John's sense of obligation to the town. Before the year is out, John solidifies his Americanness by naturalizing as a citizen, which he does with great relish, and takes his first engineering gig in the United States by building locks and dams along the Sand and Beaver Canal in the neighboring state of Ohio.

Now, as we know from episode 83, railroads are quickly spreading and displacing the importance of canals in the mid-19th century United States. So it's no surprise then that, by 1839, John finds himself surveying for railroads. While doing so, however, he learns of a fascinating new line, the Allegheny Portage Railroad.

Okay, here's the deal. Back in the 1820s, before locomotive-powered railways had come along, Pennsylvania's movers and shakers wanted to connect the whole state with a single canal system. You know, like New York's Erie Canal. They came up with a very descriptive name for it: the Pennsylvania Canal. They had a problem though: the 1,400-foot-tall Allegheny Mountains.

Well, the next decade's railroad technology proved to be the answer. Not by replacing the canal, but supplementing it with a 36-mile track running over the Allegheny Mountains from Johnstown to Hollidaysburg. In these two riverfront towns, a canal boat can steam toward the shore, then float onto a flatbed railroad car.

Next, it's secured. Then massive, thick hemp ropes powered by stationary engines pull the cars up a series of inclines, kind of like steps, allowing the boat to travel right over the mountains. This genius system is the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and thanks to it, you can now travel from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in a mere four days. But the Portage Railway has a weakness: the rope. It may have a seven-inch circumference, but hemp rope can only take so much.

And as these massive cords pull one canal boat-laden car after another up inclines as steep as 10%, well, sometimes they snap. Injury and death typically follow. John can fix this though. He's read in a German publication about rope being made from strands of iron rather than hemp.

Huh. It doesn't exist in the United States yet, but John figures he can make it. He sets up shop at his Saxenburg home and uses European methods to wind iron strands into one-inch-thick iron rope, despite an initial sabotage incident attempted by hemp rope interests. Yep, the hemp rope lobby is a thing at this point. The Allegheny Portage Railroad soon sees the superiority of John's iron rope.

Next thing he knows, John, or Man of Iron as he comes to be known, is hiring his fellow German immigrants away from their farms as he fills orders for companies ranging from canal operations to coal mines. And yes, you heard that correctly. This inventing, industrious, company-owning engineer is called Man of Iron. Or might we say Iron Man? Come on, Tony Stark, be more original.

Now a successful iron rope-making business owner, John Roebling furthers his rise in May 1844. Seems the Pennsylvania Canal has a chronically weather-damaged aqueduct bridge passing over the Allegheny River at Pittsburgh, and the Aqueduct Committee is offering $100 for the best proposed remedy. Well, John believes he has the answer. Remember his love affair with suspension bridges back at the Polytechnic Institute, and that trip he took to visit the first one in Bavaria?

Good, because John submits plans for what would be the world's first suspension aqueduct bridge. Naturally, it draws a lot of questions, particularly on how such a bridge could support the weight of flowing water. But the late 30-something immigrants, Iron Rope, and other stabilizing ideas win the committee over. He gets the contract and demonstrates his brilliance when he completes the suspension aqueduct bridge in nine months.

Now John is in his stride. In 1849, he uproots from Saxenburg, moving his family and now thriving Iron Rope Company to Trenton, New Jersey. Meanwhile, he continues to build one successful suspension bridge slash aqueduct after another, and in 1851, John is entrusted with constructing the Niagara Falls International Suspension Bridge.

In building over the roughly 800-foot-wide, 200-foot-deep gorge, the proudly naturalized U.S. citizen creates two levels, a lower one for pedestrians and an upper one for the locomotives of the Great Western Canada Railroad. When it opens in 1855, this masterful work of engineering and art spanning such a gorgeous yet dangerous point of the U.S.-Canadian border brings John international acclaim. But how does he do it?

I mean, one in four bridges fail in the mid-19th century, and suspension bridges are particularly terrifying. For instance, just a year before John completed his work at Niagara Falls, a five-year-old bridge over the Ohio River built by another renowned engineer came crashing down at Wheeling, Virginia. Yes, just Virginia, because West Virginia is still a few years out from breaking off. The intelligence or newspaper described it like this.

For a few minutes, we watched it with breathless anxiety, lunging like a ship in a storm. At one time, it rose to nearly the height of the tower, then fell and twisted and writhed. At last, there seemed to be a determined twist along the entire spine, about one half of the floor being nearly reversed, and down went the immense structure from its dizzy height to the stream below with an appalling crash and roar.

Well, in addition to his ever-thick iron ropes, John Roebling also uses trusses, essentially wooden or iron beam structures consisting of a series of triangles, which he builds right along the sides of his suspension bridge's decks. This, John reports, stiffens the hanging structure and thus minimizes the swaying caused by use or even the wind.

I know that sounds small, but the swaying can grow as the bridge picks up momentum, kind of like a car caught in a fishtail. Except, bridges can't spin, so when they hit that critical point, they self-destruct. Case in point, the Ohio River Bridge. Yikes. But John remains a fan of suspension bridges. In his opinion, they are highly dangerous if built incorrectly, but when done properly, there is no safer overpass in the world.

Of course, as we enter the 1860s, the Civil War doesn't spare this rich and famous man of iron. First, his son and protege, Washington, goes to war. And at some later point, the gifted engineer is invited to the U.S. War Department's office to advise on some matter. Unfortunately, General John C., the Pathfinder Fremont, leaves him waiting. The man who does more than 10 hastily writes a note on the back of his business card and sends it into the Pathfinder's office. It reads,

"John Roebling has not zeleesha to wait upon any man." Ha! But that work ethic of his can come at a cost. It's only when his wife dies in late 1864 that John Roebling realizes he's neglected her. In the years to come, the despondent widower will try to regain that lost time through seances. But even as the war rages, John is still building. He's working on his greatest bridge yet, in fact.

A decade in the making, this massive suspension bridge with two 230-foot towers and wired cables measuring 12.5 inches in diameter passes over the Ohio at a river span of 1,057 feet to connect the cities of Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. When the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge opens to great fanfare on December 1st, 1866, it is the longest suspension bridge in the world.

More than 10,000 people begin to use it on a daily basis. Truly, it seems there is no river span John Roebling can't overcome. Everyone can see that. This bridge will even be renamed in his honor as the Roebling Suspension Bridge. Naturally then, he has to build something bigger, like a bridge between the cities of New York and Brooklyn. There's a bit of myth and mystery surrounding how John gets this gig and how the project to build the Brooklyn Bridge ever got off the ground in the first place.

Let's start with John. We can take or leave the conventionally believed story that he and Little Washington were marooned on the East River. Personally, I buy it, but if you don't, that's fine. More concretely, though, we know the Man of Iron wrote a letter in 1857 arguing the Brooklyn Bridge could be built. It was subsequently published in the Journal of Commerce. Little surprise, then, that the world's premier bridge engineer gets tapped for it. He's already expressed interest publicly.

On the other hand, the dream of a bridge over the East River has been just that, a dream, for over half a century. People, well, Brooklynites, New Yorkers or less interested, have called for such a bridge since at least 1800. But as everybody knew, it was completely impossible. Were views changing half a century later, though, as John Roebling and his iron rope built other supposedly impossible suspension bridges across the nation? They must have been.

Allegedly, the first concrete step was taken on December 21, 1866. That night, a young, ambitious Brooklyn contractor named William Kingsley went with Judge Alexander McHugh to call on the influential, handsome, mutton-chopped New York State Senator, Henry Murphy, and persuade him to support legislation for such a bridge.

Most seem to believe the meeting happened. There's a plaque in Owl's Head Park, Brooklyn, honoring the alleged sit-down that happened there in a house long gone. That said, noted historian David McCullough expresses serious doubts about it in his book, The Great Bridge. Whether you choose to believe that meeting happened or didn't, though, State Senator Henry Murphy comes through. His bill, an act to incorporate the New York Bridge Company, becomes New York law on April 16, 1867.

The company is organized the following month with Henry as president. John Roebling is named as chief engineer. And with the nation's most brilliant engineer at the helm, what could go wrong? It's June 28th, 1869. John Roebling is in Brooklyn, standing at the Fulton Ferry Slip along the East River shore. The chief engineer is immersed in his work, as usual.

he and his mutton-chopped, mustachioed Union vet assistant, Colonel William Payne, are determining the precise location where the bridge's future tower on the Brooklyn side ought to be. At the same time, a ferry boat is approaching the slip. Packed with hundreds of passengers, its sheer momentum has the boat coming in fast.

The ferry boat slams into the slips cushioning fender piles with such force they bend all the way back to the firm beam on which John's standing and completely crush most of the toes on his right foot. John is taken immediately to his son Washington's Brooklyn home at 137 Hicks Street. The toes have to come off. The man of iron refuses any anesthetic as a surgeon severs the digits. Still, this shouldn't be too bad of a recovery, but John isn't so lucky.

Chalk it up to the medicine of the era, or John's refusing to listen to his surgeons. But things grow steadily worse in the following weeks. First come the headaches, then his face freezes horrifically with his mouth gaping open, and finally, he has seizures. Even still, the engineer who once told John C. Fremont he waits for no man tries to write notes. Finally, he falls into a coma. John wakes from it, but he's clearly not all there anymore.

With one final convulsion, the 63-year-old bridge-building patriotic immigrant, beloved by his family and employees alike, dies around 3 a.m., July 22, 1869. Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge has yet to even begin.

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because Americans lose when politicians choose. Learn more at GuardYourCard.com. Are you earning and investing in the stock market? In real estate? How about in relationships? Are you earning and investing in your life?

I'm Doc G, semi-retired hospice physician and host of the Earn and Invest podcast, where we have the 201 or next level conversations about money and life. Not only how you make money and grow it, but also how you use your wealth to create a better and more fulfilling existence. Join us every Monday and Thursday wherever you listen to fine podcasts. Beyond the heartbreak that attends the loss of any beloved public figure, John Roebling's passing makes some wonder if the bridge between New York and Brooklyn will die with him.

In truth, though, such concerns at present will be overstated in legend and even by future scholars. Those closest to the process here in 1869 know exactly who can and must step into the Man of Iron's massive shoes. His son, Colonel Washington Roebling.

Indeed, even as the New York Brooklyn's Daily Eagle reports on John's death by praising him as a martyr to the pursuit of science, who baptized and hallowed the Brooklyn Bridge in his life's blood, it also assures readers that the great but gone engineer himself saw Washington as wholly capable.

Close quote.

It's been a while since we met Washington as a stranded, teenage, East River ferryboat passenger, so let me catch you up on him. As I mentioned very briefly, he was his father's protege. Frankly, he's a bit more relaxed than his father, and perhaps not quite the same level of a visionary, but I'd still say Washington is a brilliant chip off the old block. He has his father's sharp, handsome features, piercing eyes, and ability to grow an amazing beard.

Like his old man, this second-generation German-American studied engineering at one of the finest schools imaginable, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Washington proved a capable officer during the Civil War as well, participating in eight battles, including Gettysburg, and continued to hone his craft a bit by building three bridges for the army. The war also brought him love. Washington met his wife, Emily Warren, at an officer's ball.

He and his dark-haired New York bride married in 1865. Returning from the war, Colonel Washington Roebling threw himself right back into work with his father, who was then completing the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge. John actually returned east shortly after its 1866 grand opening and left the finishing touches on this project to his son.

Washington and Emily then went to Europe, where, in addition to visiting his ancestral home village, the German-American studied a new engineering development that would be of great benefit while building the New York-Brooklyn Bridge. It's called the pneumatic caisson.

So what on earth is this thing and how does it work? I think the easiest way to grasp Cayson's is to think back to that first time in childhood when you submerged a cup upside down in water, a filled bucket, sink, pool, whatever, and found that, incredibly, the cup didn't fill with water. It remained full of air instead.

The air exerted enough force, or air pressure, that the water couldn't enter your cup. Until you compromised the air pressure by tilting the cup, of course, then it was game over. Now, in your mind's eye, replace the cup with a similarly hollowed out but colossal rectangular structure. Yeah, this is what our caissons look like, and we'll use two of them. Each will serve separately as the foundation for one of the bridge's two towers.

Focusing on one caisson in our mental picture for the moment though, let's add workers building a stone tower on the floating caisson. As the tower grows, its weight will drive the air-filled wooden rectangle to the East River's floor. Now give the caisson pressurized shafts and pipes that connect its air pocket to the surface, which enables workers to enter and exit the underwater structure's air-filled bottomless cavity.

Here, they'll dig down, and as they pipe in more compressed air, they'll also send dirt and rocks to the surface through pressurized, water-filled shafts. As the workers do this, the caisson will descend deeper into the ground under the East River. Upon reaching sufficiently hard ground beneath this ill-named tidal strait, the workers will replace the now subterranean caisson's air with cement, leaving it to serve as a bridge tower's permanent foundation. It's brilliant.

If that felt a bit abstract, no worries. I'm sure you'll put it together as we bear witness to Washington Roebling and his small army of experts and workers making this idea a reality. On May 3rd, 1870, half a dozen or so tugboats pull what looks like a massive rectangular ship down the East River. This is our first caisson, or Brooklyn caisson as it's sometimes called, since it will be installed on the Brooklyn side of the East River.

Made mostly of wood, this cube-like vessel measures 168 feet long and 102 feet wide and is 14.5 feet tall. Unlike a ship though, the caissons solid on top and open on the bottom. The air captured in its nine and a half foot cavity is what's keeping this thing afloat. Chief Engineer Washington Roebling and half a dozen or so others stand on top of the flat, raft-like caissons deck. They beam with pride, as well they should,

The shipbuilding firm Webb & Bell has spent months crafting this caisson, and they've already proven some naysayers wrong simply by getting it on the water to take this short four-mile voyage toward the East River's Fulton Ferry Slip. The next day, they move the Brooklyn caisson into its permanent position. It's the same spot where Washington Roebling's father received his ultimately mortal foot injury, but the ferry slip on which he stood is now gone. In its place is an underwater three-sided wooden basin.

Held in place by the basin, the air-filled caisson touches the river bottom at low tide, but rises right along with the waterline at high tide. The caisson is still too light to be submerged. That won't be the case for long though. Through most of the next two months, hammers swing and concrete pours as workmen build up the caisson's roof from five timber courses to 15.

Others are elongating the wrought iron shafts connecting the top of the caisson to the air-filled chambers below, thus enabling workers to descend to the river bottom to dig. And as these projects are completed in mid-June, masons begin building a tower on top of the caisson by laying an almost three-ton block of limestone. By the end of the month, the weight of the built-up roof and the tower's first three layers of stone are so great, the caisson no longer rises at high tide.

It rests firmly on the bottom of the East River. But that's enough about what's happening on the surface. Aren't you curious about the work that has been and is still going on below? Me too. Like the newspaper reporters and other visitors, let's head down inside the Brooklyn Cason and see for ourselves. We start on top of the structure, where three steam-powered derricks move massive stones into place for the hard-hatted masons building the tower.

From here, we climb down a ladder into an open space in the tower's middle. Now we descend again, this time through a circular door in the floor, which leads to an airlock. Once inside, an attendant shuts the overhead door. "'Hold your noses,' he warns while turning a brass handle. Steam-engine-produced compressed air rushes into the chamber. "'Did you hold your nose and blow? If not, your eardrums may feel like they're about to burst.'

The worst of this sensation soon passes though. Meanwhile, the attendant watches a gauge on the wall. Once the air pressure in this chamber reads the same as the caisson below, he removes a plate from the middle of the floor and once again, we descend on an iron ladder. A very long, passing through all 15 layers of caisson roofing, iron ladder. It's almost otherworldly or surreal down here. The caisson itself is split into six chambers with load-bearing walls.

Regardless of which chamber we enter, the air is humid, damp, and dank. Breathing feels different. It's hard to describe, but you can't whistle or blow out a candle down here, and your voice is thin and high-pitched. Oh, and it's hot. I don't know what the temperature is right this second, but it's often over 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

In this sweltering heat, 120 sweat-drenched workmen, or sandhogs as these underground workers will come to be known down the road, look like shadowy creatures as they dig and move about amid the white-blue flames of their gas-lit calcium lights and sperm whale candles. Picture the workers at the caissons' perimeter. As usual, these sandhogs are furiously working to dislodge a boulder. Some are digging around it. Others are driving steel bars into it with sledgehammers.

This one looks particularly big. It might be time to use explosives. Blowing things up in this underground chamber was initially terrifying, but Washington warmed up to the idea. Good thing too. Doing so increases the caissons' rate of descent from 6 inches to 12 or even 18 inches per week. With this boulder clear, it looks like the workers are ready to let the caisson descend again.

Men take massive sledges and strike the thick wooden blocks under the chamber walls. As the blocks fall, the caisson drops. And look at that. We're barely a few inches lower. Well, time for them to dig around the caisson's 540-foot perimeter, locate boulders, reset the blocks, and repeat the process. Meanwhile, other workers bring the unearthed dirt, rock, and chunks of boulders to the sludge-looking pool with a shaft in it.

In order to keep the air pressure right inside the caisson, the shaft is full of water. It has a clamshell bucket that comes down from the surface above, enters the straw-like shaft, then scoops up the mud, muck, and rock the workers pour into the pool at its base. The buckets are constantly breaking and don't work if men aren't stirring the sludge. But that's why Washington has extras. With five buckets total, the caisson usually has at least one of its two excavating shafts in working order. We'll go ahead and ascend to the surface now.

back up the iron ladders and through the airlock to the much brighter, cooler surface. Our brief visit to the Kaysen's underworld has left us drenched in sweat and covered in mud, but imagine being a sand hog down here working an eight-hour shift six days a week. And the work never stops apart from the Sabbath. Every day is divided into three eight-hour shifts. That's what it takes to keep this Kaysen descending a mere foot or so per week.

It's hard, if not terrifying work when you stop and think about the weight of the tower and river above. It's not good for your health either, evidenced by those working in the depths noticing their spit has turned black. But there's no shortage of willing, eager immigrants ready to descend into this space we might call a ninth, previously unknown circle of Dante's Inferno. Most of these workers are Irish. If they don't hail from the Emerald Isle, they're likely German or Italian.

And so, through the latter half of 1870, the casing continues down, past the saltwater riverbed into dry clay, then through pockets of fresh water as the largely immigrant workforce burrows down 10, 20, 30, then 40 feet underneath the East River's mean high tide. There have been accidents. Most notably was the Great Blowout, in which too much air pressure turned an excavating water shaft into a geyser unlike anything the world has ever seen.

But no significant damage or death have tainted the work. Sadly, that fortuitous trend won't hold. It's 9:30 p.m., December 1st, 1870. Roughly 80 men are laboriously removing dirt and rock when suddenly, someone notices smoke or flame dancing along a small part of the caisson's roof. My God, is there a fire inside the roof? There is.

Terrified at the thought of the roof collapsing or the highly pressurized oxygen-charged chamber in which they're working bursting into flames, all 80 men scramble until foreman Charles Young calms them down, that is. Getting their heads on straight, the men shove wet clothes, mud, whatever they can find into the hole in the roof above. They soon get hoses on the spot. Washington Roebling is on the scene within 30 minutes and stays in the caisson until 5 a.m. the next morning.

He and the foreman are both terribly ill by the time they leave, and the fire appears dealt with, but it isn't. Per Washington's instructions, his workers drill into the roof to check for damage, only to find the fourth level of timber is nothing but a bed of hot coals. Washington realizes he has only one option. He'll have to flood the caisson. He leaves it filled with water for two and a half days. It takes three months to repair the caisson's roof, but truthfully, it could have been worse.

Only the first four courses of timber were damaged. The remaining 11 above them were not. The partially built stone tower on top of the caisson wasn't impacted in the slightest. It seems that Washington's inclination to overshoot on durability and strength has saved the day. By March 6th, 1871, all repairs to the roof are done, and by March 11th, the caisson's shafts and air chambers in which so many hundreds have dug under the East River are filled with concrete.

Encased in the earth, the structure's wooden sides and roof will never rot. At a depth of 44.5 feet below mean high tide, the Brooklyn Cason sits on bedrock and will forever serve as a permanent foundation for the bridge's first and still ascending tower. One Cason down, one to go. Two months later, on May 8, 1871, shipbuilders Webb and Bell launched the second Cason into the East River.

It's towed into its permanent location between piers 29 and 30 on September 11th. Like the Brooklyn Cason, additional courses of roofing are added as it rises and falls with the tide. By late November, the masonry on top is heavy enough to keep the New York Cason down at the river's bottom. But not everything's the same this time around. The New York Cason is four feet longer and has several additional courses of timber. Washington Roebling will note with pride.

It also has a thin iron boilerplate skin lining its hollow chambers below. Yeah, Washington isn't risking another fire.

Nor is this the only lesson taken from the first go-around. In this world of no walkie-talkies or cell phones, Colonel William Payne comes up with a signal system to enable sandhogs to communicate with workers on the surface. The descent is faster on the New York side, too. Overall, it'll average two feet per week. I suppose that's to be expected when much of what you're digging through includes fine sand that can be sucked up through pipes. The sandhogs are jazzed. This is so much better than digging in Brooklyn.

But with bedrock being significantly deeper, that also means having to dig deeper. And that depth gives rise to a new problem: Cason's disease, or as it's more commonly known, the bends. For every two feet lower the caisson sinks, the air pressure inside has to increase by a pound. As that happens, a few men start to lose control of some muscles, particularly in their legs. Sometimes it can get painful, especially on the joints.

This happened in the Brooklyn casing too, but only going to a depth of 44.5 feet. Air pressure never exceeded much more than 20 pounds to the square inch beyond normal. On the New York side, the river is so much deeper and the digging so much faster that the workers are at a similar level only a month in, and they still have a long way to go. Washington Roebling is sure he can expect to see more cases of the bends among those brave enough to go down into the casing.

The young chief engineer is proactive. Washington shortens shifts, increases pay, and hires the impressive surgeon Dr. Andrew Smith to monitor cases and treat workers, including things like lay off the liquor, get a full night's sleep, and report any illness. Most importantly, he thinks there's something about the speed at which sandhogs are transitioning from the pressurized atmosphere of the caisson to the surface that's causing the bends. The keen doctor is right.

When a person rapidly transitions from a pressurized atmosphere back to a normal level of air pressure, solution in the body's blood and tissue release nitrogen bubbles that can cause paralysis, pain, or even death. No wonder, then, that as the New York caisson descends and the air pressure increases, cases of the bends become more frequent and severe.

Now, the doc doesn't know the science behind this, but based on his observations, he asks the men to slow their roll coming back up by a few minutes. But even as the caisson reaches a depth of more than 70 feet down and an air pressure in the mid-30s, few do. On April 22nd, 1872, a 40-year-old German immigrant named John Myers goes to work in the caisson for the first time. It's also his last.

He comes up, feels sick, starts walking home, and drops dead. Only a week later, an Irishman, Patrick McKay, slumps over in the airlock. He's taken to the hospital where he convulses and dies. Pay is up, shifts are shorter, men are striking, and then a month later, on May 17th, English-born William Reardon comes up from the case and vomits, loses control of his legs, and dies. 110 men have experienced severe symptoms and three have died inside a month.

and they aren't yet down to bedrock. Good God, how many more must die for this bridge? The next day, Washington Roebling makes a bold decision. The New York caisson will go no deeper. Though not to bedrock and amid sand, Washington notes that the strata at the current depth appear not to have moved in millions of years. He trusts the compact ground, which is now bending his iron bars, won't budge. Thus, at 78 and a half feet below mean high tide, the descent stops.

They finish filling the New York Cason with cement on July 12, 1872. Like its twin on the Brooklyn side of the river, this Cason will support a bridge tower forever. Washington Roebling should be filled with pride. Sinking these Casons in and of itself is an engineering feat, even if the bridge is far from done. His father would be proud, but Washington is in no condition to enjoy the accomplishment.

Ever facing the same dangers as his workers, the 35-year-old chief engineer made countless subterranean trips. And after one descent in the final days of overseeing the New York basin, fearless sandhogs had to carry their fearless leader out of the airlock. Paralysis, vomiting, convulsing. That's right. Washington Roebling has fallen victim to the bends. Colonel Washington Roebling survives. He's a far cry from a full recovery, though.

It seems his work as the Brooklyn Bridge's chief engineer has made a casualty out of the Antietam and Gettysburg veteran. Washington's health is up and down, but by and large, he's bedridden. At one point, he lacks the strength to feed himself. Whether this is entirely due to the ongoing effects of the bends, or, as historian David McCullough speculates, a nervous breakdown, the outcome is the same. Washington is effectively an invalid.

He could never continue in his role as chief engineer in this state, if not for his wife, Emily. As I'm sure you recall my mentioning earlier, Emily and Washington met at an officer's ball at the end of the Civil War. She and Washington, or Washi, as she affectionately calls him, have a strong, loving marriage. They support each other. So when Emily finds her union colonel and engineer husband reduced to the state of bedridden patient, the tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed intellectual steps up in every regard.

Emily not only secures his continued position as chief engineer, she learns advanced math and engineering so she can relay Washington's instructions to his staff while he uses a telescope to watch the work from his bedroom window of their Brooklyn home at 110 Columbia Heights. In the words of Roebling biographer D.B. Steinman, quote, "She became his coworker and his principal assistant, his inspector, messenger, ambassador, and spokesman, his sole contact with the outside world," close quote.

Or better still, I'll quote Washington himself: "At first, I thought I would succumb, but I had a tower to lean upon: my wife, a woman of infinite tact and wisest counsel." Thus the bridge continues. With the caissons completed, masons and their steam-engine-powered derricks build the limestone and granite towers higher and higher still. They complete the Brooklyn Tower in June 1875.

The New York Tower falls a year later, amid the nation's centennial celebrations in July 1876. Each reaches 276 and a half feet above the high water mark. In other words, the only thing taller than these towers in all of 1870s New York is the spire of Trinity Church, which only surpasses them by a few feet. The Brooklyn Tower consists of 38,214 cubic yards of stone.

Starting deeper below the East River, yet needing to be equal in height above the water, the New York Tower comes in at 46,945 cubic yards. To put that another way, the towers weigh 80,000 and 90,000 tons, respectively. And all of that rests on the wooden and cement casings sunk below the East River. As the towers are nearing completion, another phase of the bridge is getting underway. Its anchorage system.

One anchorage each is placed several hundred feet inland on both sides of the bridge. Fun side note, the New York Anchorage occupies the spot where George Washington lived during New York's brief time serving as the U.S. Capitol. Needless to say, that stately home is no longer there. Picture the anchorage as solid stone buildings, save for two arched passageways down at street level.

Standing at roughly 90 feet and measuring more than 100 feet along each side, they would be quite impressive if not overshadowed by the bridge's towers. But the reason for these massive works of granite isn't to impress. They will resist the pull of the four massive cables yet to be added to the suspension bridge. Here's how this works.

Four huge iron anchors, we're talking 23,000 tons of anchor for each side, are buried under each of these massive 60,000 ton granite anchorage structures. Each of these anchors are then attached to incredibly large chains of wrought iron bars, which are embedded in the masonry as they curve up and toward the river.

Each chain will then connect to 19 thick steel-cabled strands that, running together, will form a single, gigantic, 15 3/4 inch diameter cable to run over this bridge. With a total of four such cables, one of the four anchors in each of the two anchorages will be solely dedicated to holding exactly one cable in. The Brooklyn Anchorage is finished in November 1875.

New York's anchorage is completed the same month as the New York Tower, July 1876. The next month, on August 14th, tugboats carry two 3/4 inch thick wire ropes across the East River, hoisted atop the towers, connected at the anchorages, then spliced together. This now single steel wire rope is over a mile long and is the first true physical connection between Brooklyn and New York.

Connected to steam power, this "traveler," as it's called, can loop endlessly to run anything needed across the work bridge, including people. It's 1:30 p.m., August 25th, 1876. Up on top of the Brooklyn Anchorage, master mechanic E.F. Farrington sits down on a single board seat. Think of a swing from your childhood that hangs down from the Brooklyn Bridge's traveler rope. Another rope is passed around his chest as a sort of harness.

Dressed in a linen suit, the 60-year-old mechanic signals that he's ready to go. The steam-powered travel rope is engaged, and he's off. 100 or so feet off the ground and climbing, Farrington passes over Brooklyn houses. Crowds cheer him below. He answers by ditching his rope harness, standing on his single board seat, then, while holding on with only one hand, lifting his straw hat to the people. Reaching the Brooklyn Tower, our daring mechanic launches out across the span of the East River.

Boat whistles sound off as he glides through the air 250 feet over their heads. As he approaches the New York Tower, Lower Manhattan's churches and factories join the East River captains in making a raucous salute. A countless throng cheer Farrington on as he completes the third leg from the New York Tower to its accompanying anchorage. It worked. By God, it worked! A human being has crossed the treacherous East River without the aid of a vessel. Incredible.

When pressed for comment, Farrington tells reporters there's one man who deserves the credit, the incapacitated figure who watches everything happen with the telescope from his bedroom window, Washington Roebling. But victory isn't here, not just yet. While the wire traveler rope held strong today, there will be doubts in the future. I trust you remember that Washington's father, John Roebling, introduced the United States to wire rope.

His sons carry on that tradition proudly as they run the family business, John A. Roebling's sons, Inc. But in a supposedly corruption-opposing gesture, one of the bridge's trustees, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, says his company will not bid on this lucrative wire cable gig. Nor, he continues, should they entertain a bid from any company connected to a bridge officer or engineer.

When the executive committee goes along with this idea, Washington Roebling sells his interest in John A. Roebling's sons so his brothers can bid. It doesn't matter. They aren't selected. South Brooklyn's J. Lloyd Haig is. Washington is nervous. He's right to be. By July 1878, the four massive cables are nearly done being installed.

This is no small thing. The process requires looping each number 8 gauge galvanized steel wire from the Brooklyn Anchorage to the New York Anchorage and back, then bundling approximately 300 of them into one strand. As you may recall from the Anchorage explanation, it takes 19 of these strands to form one of the bridge's four great cables.

To put that another way, each great cable contains over 5,000 individual wires. And if you ran each wire from end to end, they would extend more than 3,500 miles. It's taken over a year to get to this point. And months after a single wire snapped, it's been confirmed that J. Lloyd Haig is cheating the certification process and supplying bad wire. This isn't the first time the bridge has suffered from greed. You might say greed birthed it.

Back in 1867, when Brooklyn's state senator Henry Murphy was trying to get his bill for the bridge through the state legislature, he may or may not have relied on the illicit assistance of his fellow Democratic state senator, the Grand Satchman of Tammany Hall, and oh so many other things, New York City's William M. Tweed. A large man in political power and physical size, William, or Boss Tweed, and his Tweed ring ran New York at the time.

He had his finger in every pie, at least two mistresses at the same time, and used government contracts to siphon off a fortune for himself and his cronies. Basically, just picture a bearded Tony Soprano in elected office. That's Boss Tweed. And it's possible Brooklyn's esteemed state senator, Henry Murphy, made a deal with the devil to get the bridge through.

Here's the thing. The bill Henry Murphy put forward in the state legislature called for three pools of investment to create the Brooklyn Bridge Company. $3 million from Brooklyn, 1.5 mil from New York City, and $500,000 from private investors. Brooklyn would come through. Henry's constituents wanted the bridge.

In New York, however, ferry boat companies and others who wouldn't benefit from or might even suffer with the construction of such a bridge could prevail upon the city's common council not to appropriate funds. That could have been a real problem had Boss Tweed's influence not come through. But did the rotund New Yorker tell his brother Senator from Brooklyn that a $55,000 or $65,000 bribe for the council could get this through?

And the real kicker, because a bribe of this level is child's play to Boss Tweed, did Brooklyn contractor William Kingsley not only deliver this bribe, but have an understanding about gifting heavily discounted stock to the boss. See, this stock is highly valuable because even though the lion's share of cash raised comes from public funds, the state law creating the Brooklyn Bridge Company named it a private entity.

Yeah, it's a sweet deal, one that would entitle Boss Tweed to award lucrative, inflated contracts to his friends if he held a significant amount of his private stock. It's Gilded Age politics at its finest. To what extent the Brooklyn senator and contractor were involved, we'll never know for sure. All we can say without a doubt is that Boss Tweed's hands were filthier than the inside of a Brooklyn Bridge caisson.

But the Tweed Ring came crashing down in 1871, and as his scandals came to light, the Brooklyn Bridge became tainted by association, even as further legislation made the bridge a public rather than a private endeavor. Boss Tweed died in prison in April 1878, only three months before Washington Roebling's men confirmed J. Lloyd Haig's wire scam. Not to downplay Boss Tweed, but this second scam isn't just greedy, it's life-threatening.

Thankfully, our bedridden chief engineer took the precaution of designing these cables to be six times stronger than necessary. Banking on Washington's brilliance and wanting to keep things quiet, the bridge's trustees merely make J. Lloyd Haig provide extra wire free of charge to strengthen the four gargantuan cables, which are still completed only a few months later, in October 1878. And I hear you, Lloyd got off too easy. But don't worry, karma does get him.

Only a few years later, other acts of dishonesty will result in him breaking rocks in New York's famous Sing Sing prison. It's been a decade now since the construction of the bridge began, and finally, it's time to build the actual road. Steel ropes called suspenders, provided by John A. Roebling Son's company and capable of bearing the weight of 50 tons each, are hung along the four great cables.

But fund shortages, supply issues, and the decision to add another thousand tons of steel so the bridge can handle a train all cause massive delays. The public grows upset. In 1882, about one year after all the floor beams have been installed, some of the new politically inclined trustees, who don't realize his value, consider removing the physically absent chief engineer.

That doesn't play though. Emily Roebling goes to a meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers and pleads Washington's case. She not only succeeds in gaining their public support and getting the troublesome trustees to back off, Emily also becomes the first woman to ever address this professional engineering organization in the process. Come May 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge is finally finished. And Emily makes history yet again. She becomes the first person to ride in a horse-drawn carriage over the bridge.

taking a live rooster with her as a symbol of victory. Emily is delighted as the horses clop along. Workers applaud, cheer, and tip their hats in approval as the woman whose unquestionable value and role in this bridge's very existence passes by. It's now just past 1:30 in the afternoon, May 24th, 1883. The weather is beautiful, and today is the grand opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Countless New Yorkers crowd the streets from Broadway to City Hall.

They clap and cheer as New York's gray and white uniformed 7th Regiment marches in perfect rhythm with its band. 25 carriages follow. Among these are two powerful politicians, newly elected New York Governor Grover Cleveland and New York City's now beloved son, the once VP unexpectedly elevated U.S. President Chester Arthur. They ride to City Hall Park, where the president exits his carriage. From here, the governor and other dignitaries will continue on foot.

What a sight the bridge before them presents. Its massive double-arched gothic towers jet into the sky. Its four enormous steel cables, laced with vertical steel suspenders and diagonal stays, are practical yet a work of art.

The elevated pedestrian path is inviting, and to the sides of the bridge's cable cars, thousands of spectators fill up the carriage roads. Cannons fire and boats whistle as the president reaches the New York Tower. At this point, the 7th Regiment's band strikes up hail to the chief, and the soldiers line both sides of the path while Chester Arthur walks on. Brooklyn dignitaries meet him along the way.

Following this ceremonial crossing, speeches and other celebrations continue into the night when fireworks light up the sky. 14 years. That's how long it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge. And at $15 million, it cost twice the amount expected. Then there's the lives. I detailed those lost to Cason's disease, but there were accidents as well. From falling stone to falling men, an estimated 27 workers died constructing the bridge.

And how about the Roebling family? Talk about sacrifice. Construction hadn't even begun when John Roebling became the bridge's first death. Then Washington never fully recovered from the bends. This bridge was his life's great achievement, yet he wasn't even at the opening ceremony. In a way, the bridge claimed the lives of both the father and son who once spent an afternoon stranded on a river ferry boat.

Yet I wonder if either would have even been remembered if not for Emily, who had no idea at the start of this that she would become a glass ceiling shattering engineer. Fighting against some of New York's most powerful men for her husband's legacy, she ultimately made one for herself as well. By the way, Emily was at the opening ceremony, right alongside US President Chester Arthur. It takes some time for everyone to trust this bridge will indeed hold.

Poor crowd control, possibly combined with fears that the bridge is falling, lead to a tragic panic stampede only a week after the grand opening. Twelve die while dozens more are injured. This hardly puts a damper on the bridge's use. 37,000 people use it daily in its first year alone. But for many, P.T. Barnum settles the question of the East River's crossing's integrity.

A year later, in May 1884, the famous showman leads his celebrated jumbo and 20 other elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge. This does the trick for many doubters. And so, the Brooklyn Bridge is done. It's overcome the turbulent East River, physically connecting the cities of New York and Brooklyn, and thus facilitating their later merger, along with other boroughs, as an enlarged, greater New York City.

with a river span of 1,595 feet and a total length of more than a mile. It is, at its time of completion, the longest suspension bridge in the world. And when you add those pneumatic case and tower foundations, its four massive steel cables, the Brooklyn Bridge becomes for many a testament to American ingenuity, craftsmanship, and innovation.

People call it the eighth wonder of the world, and as the Brooklyn Eagle likes to clarify, eighth in point of time, but not in significance. But this isn't the only engineering feat defining Gilded Age New York. Next time, we'll witness the rise of a colossal statue, a symbol of hope and liberty. You might call her a French immigrant who welcomes others to America's shore, particularly the tired and the poor yearning to breathe free.

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