Brooklyn Bridge (New York, N.Y.)

Since the early 19th century, there were many proposals to link the cities of Brooklyn and New York, by a bridge. Various designs and compositions were suggested. One early plan actually proposed a bridge made out of wood. In 1865, John Augustus Roebling, an engineer, architect and inventor, prepared his first plans of constructing the bridge using steel cables, granite, steel and wood. Roebling was confident that his creation would be an engineering project without equal. Pushing impatiently for required approvals, he wrote in 1867: "When constructed in accordance with my design, it will not only be the greatest bridge in existence, but it will be the greatest engineering work of the continent, and of the ages. As a great work of art, and as a successful specimen of advanced bridge engineering, this structure will forever testify to the energy, enterprise, and wealth of the community which shall secure its erection." Unfortunately, John Roebling died before construction commenced in 1870. His son Washington Roebling, who was also an engineer, took over the responsibility of constructing the bridge.

The business community in Brooklyn supported the bridge proposal wholeheartedly. Some believed that the bridge would make Brooklyn the largest city in the world. To some of the more sedate citizens of Brooklyn, however, New York was a corrupt city and the last thing they wanted was a bridge connecting it to them. But if most Brooklynites who mattered endorsed the bridge enthusiastically as a civic and commercial boon, Manhattanites took longer to convince for they had benign contempt for their trans-East River rival. The Brooklyn Bridge begun as a private enterprise under the New York Bridge Company and finished as a joint civic project of the two cities. The name of the bridge evolved as prominent Brooklynites supported the bridge more than the Manhattanites and as Brooklyn became responsible for two-thirds of the expenses. After 13 years of construction, the Bridge was completed and opened to the public on May 24, 1883.

The Brooklyn Bridge was the most complex engineering achievement of its era. The two Roeblings, John and Washington, have built suspension bridges in America before but not one as large and complicated as the Brooklyn Bridge which was to span the 1,600-foot wide East River. When they set out to build it, every bolt, stay, rivet and tool, had to be designed and produced. In an engineer's notebook, special auger, pumps, handles, and boring pipes are all handsomely sketched, and the fact that enormous sized tools had to be produced to match the colossal size of the task they were to tackle was stressed. Field notebooks depict rough sketches for ironwork and railings, showing how engineers devised ideas on site, to be worked out on a drawing board later. The role that the drawings played as actual tools of instruction is also illustrated by the Bridge drawings. A diagram of wood, used in the caissons - the hollow box in which workmen dug down into the river bed to create a foundation on bedrock, carefully outlines each layer of wood. Most interesting though, is that the wood grain of two mitred segments of wood is carefully rendered. Not simply ornamental embellishments, the wood grain patterns helped show the most illiterate immigrant laborers exactly how the wood should be placed.

The Brooklyn Bridge engineering drawings were the property of the civic New York and Brooklyn Bridge Co. until 1889. Between 1889 and 1975, they were stored in a City carpenter shop in Williamsburg, under the jurisdiction of the City's Department of Plants and Structures, a department that included bridges, boats and broadcasting. In 1976, the entire collection was acquired by the Municipal Archives in order to conserve and preserve these valuable historic documents.

From the description of Drawings, 1854-1953, (bulk 1870-1898). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122639240