Brooklyn Bridge
“BROOKLYN BRIDGE”
The Brooklyn Bridge’s construction is one of the great achievements in United States history and helped pave the way for New York City’s rapid expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was an undertaking that required extraordinary effort, sacrifice and ingenuity by its designers as well as its builders to complete. Its completion was a feat of engineering that was unmatched in its time: it was the longest suspension bridge – the first to use steel-wire – and dominated the New York City skyline as the tallest structure in the western hemisphere.
The idea of a bridge linking Manhattan to Brooklyn was first formalized in a petition to the state legislature in 1802 (Feuerstein 24). From the time Dutch settlers arrived in Brooklyn in 1636, there had been a need to travel between Manhattan and Brooklyn (Feuerstein 98). There were many factors that made constructing a bridge there difficult, though. The East River was a wide and busy waterway with large ships and was surrounded by a low-lying area. This required that the bridge have a high clearance to enable ships to enter, be longer than any bridge built before it and have a significant curve. For these reasons, the idea for the bridge was continuously put off in favor of ferry services. Brooklyn’s population continued to swell though, and between 1860 and 1870, it experienced a colossal increase from 266,000 to 396,000 (Feuerstein 19). The City of New York at the time consisted only of Manhattan, which had about double the population of Brooklyn. A bridge was seen as a way to relieve overcrowding in Manhattan, while at the same time aid in the expansion of Brooklyn.
A man named John Roebling came up with the idea for the bridge in 1855 when he became frustrated while waiting for a ferry in 1855 (Logson 341). Roebling was born in 1806 in Germany where he trained to be an engineer. He immigrated to the United States in 1831 and after a failed attempt at making a living as a farmer in
The Brooklyn Bridge’s construction is one of the great achievements in United States history and helped pave the way for New York City’s rapid expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was an undertaking that required extraordinary effort, sacrifice and ingenuity by its designers as well as its builders to complete. Its completion was a feat of engineering that was unmatched in its time: it was the longest suspension bridge – the first to use steel-wire – and dominated the New York City skyline as the tallest structure in the western hemisphere.
The idea of a bridge linking Manhattan to Brooklyn was first formalized in a petition to the state legislature in 1802 (Feuerstein 24). From the time Dutch settlers arrived in Brooklyn in 1636, there had been a need to travel between Manhattan and Brooklyn (Feuerstein 98). There were many factors that made constructing a bridge there difficult, though. The East River was a wide and busy waterway with large ships and was surrounded by a low-lying area. This required that the bridge have a high clearance to enable ships to enter, be longer than any bridge built before it and have a significant curve. For these reasons, the idea for the bridge was continuously put off in favor of ferry services. Brooklyn’s population continued to swell though, and between 1860 and 1870, it experienced a colossal increase from 266,000 to 396,000 (Feuerstein 19). The City of New York at the time consisted only of Manhattan, which had about double the population of Brooklyn. A bridge was seen as a way to relieve overcrowding in Manhattan, while at the same time aid in the expansion of Brooklyn.
A man named John Roebling came up with the idea for the bridge in 1855 when he became frustrated while waiting for a ferry in 1855 (Logson 341). Roebling was born in 1806 in Germany where he trained to be an engineer. He immigrated to the United States in 1831 and after a failed attempt at making a living as a farmer in