Brooklyn Bridge History
Who Designed The Brooklyn Bridge?
Designed by John A. Roebling and built by his son and chief project engineer, Washington Roebling, construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began in 1870, making the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, as it was known at the time, the first fixed crossing of the East River.
Deadly Caissons
During early construction efforts, building the bridge’s underwater caissons proved a deadly proposition, since laborers were forced to work inside the submerged caissons, experiencing severe underwater air pressure. Some 110 permanent injuries and an additional three fatalities resulted from decompression sickness or “the bends,” but since the condition wasn’t understood at the time, the injuries became known as “caisson disease.”
Washington Roebling himself suffered a paralyzing bout of the condition, forcing his wife, Emily, to become the communications link between engineers at the construction site and her paralyzed husband sequestered in their apartment. By the bridge’s opening on May 24th, 1883, Emily had spent 11 years handling the bulk of the chief engineer’s duties.
Brooklyn Bridge Tragedy
A week after the bridge’s heavily-attended grand opening, including U.S. president Chester A. Arthur and New York mayor Franklin Edson, the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge became the scene of a grizzly Memorial Day tragedy, when a pedestrian bottleneck formed on the Manhattan side of the bridge, toppling innocent people down a short flight of stairs when panicked crowds began to fear that the entire bridge was in danger of collapse.
Workers scrambled to remove restrictive barricades, while good samaritans passed children and babies hand-over-hand to safety. Twelve people were crushed to death in the melee, while hundreds of others suffered a wide range of injuries.
When Was the Brooklyn Bridge Built?
The Brooklyn Bridge was built between 1870 and 1883 at a cost of $15.5 million or roughly half a billion in today’s currency. The bonds raised for construction were finally paid off in 1956, while during its 13-year construction, a total of 27 men died from work-related injuries and falls.
Renovated extensively in the 1950s, 1980s and 2010s, since its construction, the Brooklyn Bridge has become a major tourist attraction and a dominant icon of the New York City skyline. As of 2018, an average 116,000 vehicles, 30,000 pedestrians and 3,000 cyclist traverse the bridge each and every day, making the Brooklyn Bridge, an essential conduit in one of the busiest cities on earth.