Brooklyn Bridge

When it opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world and an engineering marvel that stitched together Manhattan and Brooklyn across the East River. The first steel-wire suspension bridge ever built, its soaring Gothic stone towers and web of cables became an instant symbol of the industrial age and of New York itself. Its construction — spanning 14 years and marked by tragedy and perseverance — is one of the great epics of American engineering.

The bridge was the vision of John A. Roebling, a German-born engineer and master of suspension design. He proposed spanning the East River with a steel-cable bridge longer than any yet built, anchored by two great masonry towers. In 1869, just as work was beginning, Roebling suffered a foot injury while surveying, contracted tetanus, and died — leaving the project to his son, Washington Roebling.

Washington Roebling took over as chief engineer, but the work exacted a terrible toll. Laborers digging the foundations inside pressurized underwater caissons suffered from 'caisson disease,' the crippling condition now known as the bends; Washington himself was left partly paralyzed. From his sickroom he continued to direct the work, while his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, learned engineering, relayed his instructions, and managed much of the construction on site — becoming indispensable to its completion.

The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24, 1883, after 14 years of work, with a main span of nearly 1,600 feet that made it the longest suspension bridge in the world. Days later a panic on the crowded promenade killed twelve people; to prove the bridge's strength, the showman P.T. Barnum famously marched a herd of elephants across it the following year. More than a century later it still carries traffic and a beloved pedestrian walkway, and remains one of the icons of New York.