The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

664 Pages·1972·2.99 MB·English

by  David G. McCullough

Also by David McCullough

JOHN ADAMS

BRAVE COMPANIONS

TRUMAN

MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK

THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS

THE GREAT BRIDGE

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Copyright © 1972 by David McCullough
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
The quotation from My Life and Loves, by Frank Harris, is
reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc.; copyright 1925 by
Frank Harris, © 1953 by Nellie Harris, © 1963 by Arthur Leonard
Ross as executor of the Frank Harris Estate.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are
registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
McCullough, David G.
The great bridge.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Brooklyn Bridge (New York, N.Y.)
I. Title.
TG25.N53M32 624.5’5’097471 72-081823
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1831-3
ISBN-10: 0-7432-1831-0
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
For my mother and father
Contents

AUTHOR'S NOTE
PART ONE
1. The Plan
2. Man of Iron
3. The Genuine Language of America
4. Father and Son
5. Brooklyn
6. The Proper Person to See
7. The Chief Engineer
PART TWO
8. All According to Plan
9. Down in the Caisson
10. Fire
11. The Past Catches Up
12. How Natural, Right, and Proper
13. The Mysterious Disorder
14. The Heroic Mode
PART THREE
15. At the Halfway Mark
16. Spirits of ’76
17. A Perfect Pandemonium
18. Number 8, Birmingham Gauge
19. The Gigantic Spinning Machine
20. Wire Fraud
21. Emily
22. The Man in the Window
23. And Yet the Bridge Is Beautiful
24. The People’s Day
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
AUTHOR’S NOTE

WHEN I began this book I was setting out to do something that had not been done
before. I wanted to tell the story of the most famous bridge in the world and in
the context of the age from which it sprang. The Brooklyn Bridge has been
photographed, painted, engraved, embroidered, analyzed as a work of art and as
a cultural symbol; it has been the subject of a dozen or more magazine articles
and one famous epic poem; it has been talked about and praised more it would
seem than anything ever built by Americans. But a book telling the full story of
how it came to be, the engineering involved, the politics, the difficulties
encountered, the heroism of its builders, the impact it had on the lives and
imaginations of ordinary people, a book that would treat this important historical
event as a rare human achievement, had not been written and such was my goal.
I was also greatly interested in the Roeblings, about whom quite a little had
been written, but not for some time or from the kind of research I had in mind.
Moreover, a good deal of legend about the Roeblings—father, son, and daughter-
in-law—still persisted, along with considerable confusion. It seemed to me that
the story of these remarkable people deserved serious study. It is an
extraordinary story, to say the least, not only in human terms, but in what it
reveals about America in the late nineteenth century, a time that has not been
altogether appreciated for what it was.
And beyond that I had a particular interest in the city of Brooklyn itself,
having spent part of my life there, when my wife and I were first married, in a
house just down the street from where Washington and Emily Roebling once
lived.
But early in my research another objective emerged. It became clear that
this, to a large degree, was to be Washington Roebling’s book. There was, for
example, that day in the library at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute when I
unlocked a large storage closet to see for the first time shelf after shelf of his
notebooks, scrapbooks, photographs, letters, blueprints, old newspapers he had
saved, even the front-door knocker to his house in Brooklyn. No one knew then
what all was in the collection. There were boxes of his papers that had not been
opened in years, bundles of letters that so far as I could tell had been examined
by nobody. The excitement of the moment can be imagined. The contents of the
collection, plus those in another large collection at Rutgers University, both of
which are described in the Bibliography, were such that they often left me with
the odd feeling of actually having known the Chief Engineer of the bridge. He
was not only the book’s principal character, he was the author’s main personal
contact with that distant day and age. So it has also been my aim to convey, with
all the historical accuracy possible, just what manner of man this was who built
the Brooklyn Bridge, who achieved so much against such staggering odds, and
who asked so little.
I am not an engineer and the technical side of the research has often been
slow going for me. But though I have written the book for the general reader, I
have not bypassed the technical side. If I could make it clear enough that I could
understand it, if it was interesting to me, then my hope was that it would be both
clear and interesting to the reader.
During my years of research and writing I have been extremely fortunate in
the assistance I have received from many people and I should like to express to
them my abiding gratitude. For their kindnesses and help I wish to thank the
librarians at both Rutgers and Rensselaer and in particular Miss Irene K.
Lionikis of the Rutgers Library and Mrs. Orlyn LaBrake and Mrs. Adrienne
Grenfell of the library at Rensselaer. Herbert R. Hands of the American Society
of Civil Engineers, David Plowden, Dr. Milton Mazer, Dr. Roy Korson,
Professor of Pathology at the University of Vermont, W. H. Pearson, Sidney W.
Davidson, J. Robert Maguire, Charlotte La Rue of the Museum of the City of
New York, Regina M. Kellerman, William S. Goodwin, Allan R. Talbot, John
Talbot, and Jack Schiff, the engineer in charge of New York’s East River bridges,
each contributed to the research. And Dr. Paul Gugliotta of New York, architect
and engineer, said some things over lunch one day years ago that started me
thinking about doing such a book and later very kindly walked the bridge with
me and answered many questions.
I am especially indebted to Robert M. Vogel, Curator, Division of
Mechanical and Civil Engineering at the Smithsonian Institution, to John A.
Kouwenhoven, authority on New York City history and on James B. Eads, to
Nomer Gray, bridge engineer, who has made his own extensive technical studies
of the bridge, and to Charlton Ogburn, author and friend. Each of them read the
manuscript and offered numerous critical suggestions, but any errors in fact or
judgment that may appear in the book are entirely my own.
I would like to acknowledge, too, the contribution of three members of the
Roebling family: Mr. Joseph M. Roebling of Trenton and Mr. F. W. Roebling,
also of Trenton, who gave of their time to talk with me about their forebears, and
Mrs. James L. Elston of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who let me borrow an old family
scrapbook.
I am grateful for the research facilities and assistance offered by the staffs of
the following: the Trenton Free Public Library; the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh;
the Brooklyn Public Library; the Long Island Historical Society, Brooklyn, and
particularly to Mr. John H. Lindenbusch, its executive director; the Newport
Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island; the Library of Congress; the New
York Historical Society; the New York Public Library; the Engineering Societies
Library, New York; the Middlebury College Library, Middlebury, Vermont; the
Baker Library, Dartmouth College; the Putnam County Historical Society and
the Julia Butterfield Memorial Library at Cold Spring, New York; and the Butler
County Library, Butler, Pennsylvania.
I wish also to acknowledge my indebtedness to two valued friends who are
no longer living—to Conrad Richter, for his encouragement and example, and to
Clarence A. Barnes, my father-in-law, who was born on Willow Street on
Brooklyn Heights, when the bridge was still unfinished, and who could talk
better than anyone I knew about times gone by.
Lastly I would like to express my thanks to Paul R. Reynolds, who provides
steady encouragement and sound advice; to Peter Schwed, Publisher of Simon
and Schuster, who had faith in the idea from the start; to Jo Anne Lessard, who
typed the manuscript; to my children, for their confidence and optimism; and to
my wife, Rosalee, who helped more than anyone.
—D M C
AVID C ULLOUGH