Brooklyn Bridge. 132 years. Part 2

The first part of the story is here
Brooklyn Bridge is the first bridge ever built between Brooklyn and Manhattan. At the time it was finished in May 1883, it was famous for being the biggest bridge in the world - stretching almost 1600 feet across the East River.
But it was not always the name of this  bridge.     Residents originally referred to it as the New York bridge or  even the East River Bridge. In 1867, a letter to the editor of a local newspaper called it the Brooklyn Bridge and the name stuck. Eventually, in 1915, the city government made the name official and in 1964, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.

The bridge’s construction took 14 years, involved 600 workers and cost $15 million (more than $320 million in today’s dollars). The two stone 276-feet-tall towers were the tallest structures in New York, except for Trinity Church’s spire.
On May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public.   Schools and businesses were closed for the whole day in Brooklyn, while Manhattan had a half-holiday . Thousands watched and cheered the ceremony and procession. For New York, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge had much deeper significance than transportation. It bonded the cities of Manhattan and Brooklyn together.

During the first week the bridge opened, masses of people used the bridge.  On Thursday, May 31 the bridge was very crowded.  According to various accounts, someone shouted that the bridge was collapsing, and caused the panic. Another story went that there were pickpockets in the crowds and a woman screamed and fell. The loud noise frightened everyone into believing the bridge was falling.

The commotion sparked a chain reaction of confusion, as more and more people panicked and mobbed the narrow staircase, creating a massive pileup. By the time it was all cleared up, twelve people had been trampled to death.  Though the earliest news reports claimed only 35 suffered injuries, it was most likely over a hundred.

A year later, On May 17, 1884, to put down doubts of the bridge’s stability , circus maestro Phineas T. Barnum paraded his  20 elephants across the structure to demonstrate to the public that it was safe. At the head of the parade was Jumbo, the most  famous elephant in the history.
In the early 1880s, with the focus on his traveling circus, Barnum purchased a huge African elephant named Jumbo from the London Zoo. The elephant was a beloved creature in England, and its fame preceded it to America.   Jumbo got his name from his keepers at the London Zoo.  Thanks to Barnum's promotion, the word "jumbo" entered the English language and today we have everything from "jumbo drinks" to "jumbo jets." In  1885 Jumbo was hit by the train and died. The skeletal remains are in the collection of N.Y. American Museum of Natural History.

The  bridge-trains started running in September 1884. The trip across on the bridge-train took five minutes and cost 5 cents. The trains were two 300 horsepower steam engines. By 1885 the bridge-trains had carried over 20 million passengers. In 1944 the elevated trains stopped running and the old iron terminals were pulled down.

The initial charge to make the Brooklyn Bridge crossing was one penny to cross by foot, 5 cents for a horse and rider to cross and 10 cents for a horse and wagon. The price charged for farm animals were 5 cents per cow and 2 cents per hog or sheep.

 Brooklyn Bridge has inspired a remarkable number of   poems. The Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky was moved when he first saw it in 1925, as he described in his poem "Brooklyn Bridge:"
...it stretches on cables of string
 to the feet of the stars.
I stare
 as an eskimo gapes at a train,
 I seize on it
 as a tick fastens to an ear.
 Brooklyn Bridge--
 yes....
 That's quite a thing!
In 1956, the beat poet Jack Kerouac celebrated the bridge in another visionary poem  called "The Brooklyn Bridge Blues":

I looked at the red winter
 disgusting dusk of the world,
 saw the alleys beyond,
 Brooklyn, Wolfe's redbrick jungle

 Frank Sinatra sang:
Like the folks you meet on
 Like to plant my feet on the Brooklyn bridge
 What a lovely view from
 Heaven looks at you from the Brooklyn bridge.

There are several hidden vaults inside the bridge. Below the ramps that lead up to the anchorages on both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge are vaults, once rented out as wine and champagne storage.  The alcohol was kept in stable temperatures throughout the year and the rent helped offset the cost of the bridge. The New York Times reported that city records show that the “‘Luyties Brothers’ paid $5,000 for wine storage in a vault on the Manhattan side. ‘A. Smith & Company’ paid $500 a year from 1901 until 1909 for a vault on the Brooklyn side.”  Unfortunately, these vaults no longer store wines, but rather house maintenance materials.

In 2006 city workers were conducting a regular structural inspection of the bridge when they came across the cold-war-era hoard of water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers — an estimated 352,000 of them, sealed in dozens of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible.  Boxes with blanket were labeled “For Use Only After Enemy Attack.”
Several historians said  that the find was exceptional, in part because many of the cardboard boxes of supplies were ink-stamped with two especially significant years in cold-war history: 1957, when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, and 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis seemed to bring the world to the precipice of nuclear destruction.  The shelter was located in one of the masonry foundations of the bridge on the Manhattan side.

Brooklyn Bridge charged horse-drawn carriages a toll from the time it opened. But by the Depression, the tolls were a thing of the past. There is no toll in either direction on the Brooklyn Bridge now.

Perhaps because of the bridge's size the Brooklyn Bridge has become well known for the amount of people that jumped off of it, either for publicity-seeking fame or to take their own lives. Today, the Brooklyn Bridge has more suicides than any of the other bridges in the city, including the George Washington and Verrazano-Narrows, which are actually much higher from the water.

It would be almost two years after the bridge's opening that the first jump would be made. Swimming instructor  Robert E. Odlum  made a public announcement that he would jump on May 19, 1885, two years after the bridge was opened. Odlum, dress in a bright red swimsuit,   leapt from the bridge with one arm at his side and the other pointing in the air. He died a half-hour later from his injuries. Authorities do not keep track of suicide attempts (successful or not) from New York City's bridges, so the actual number is not known. 

The bridge was  the scene of a mass exodus from the city on September 11, 2001, as downtown workers fled the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. My twins were among them-they were second years students at Pace Univercity and had classes at that day.  The bridge was  closed off to all traffic for several weeks after the attacks, with the exception of emergency vehicles.

The Brooklyn Bridge has appeared in several films over the years. It  is destroyed by a tidal wave in Deep Impact (1998) and is shown briefly in Independence Day (1996) right before an alien ship destroys the city (and presumably the bridge).

Today more than 120,000 vehicles, 4,000 pedestrians and 3,100 bicyclists cross the Brooklyn Bridge every day.  There is a pedestrian walkway with a bike lane that rises above the traffic.  At just over a mile long, this is one of the most scenic routes to take for views of both boroughs.  The skyline seen through the rays of cable are iconic.

Brooklyn Bridge. 132 years. Part 1

It took more than a decade to build this bridge,  it cost the life of its designer, and it  was constantly criticized by skeptics who predicted the entire structure was going to collapse.  When the bridge   opened  132 years ago,  on May 24, 1883 the world took notice and the entire United States celebrated.  Do you know what bridge  I'm talking about?  Yes- you are right -  this post is about Brooklyn Bridge.

Before the Brooklyn Bridge was built, there was no way to cross the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan, or Manhattan to Brooklyn, except by boat.   There was a ferry system, but  the ferries were  too small and too slow, and there were not enough of them. In the winter, the East River sometimes froze, making ferry travel impossible. Since the ice rarely froze solid enough to walk over, traveling over the river was virtually impossible.  Walt Whitman, an American poet, who founded  a weekly newspaper Long-Islander,  wrote his great poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" before the bridge was built:

The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them;
The certainty of others--the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west,
and the  heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small.

Ideas for many different types of bridges and tunnels were discussed for more than 50 years before the Brooklyn Bridge was built. There was even an idea for a bridge that would float on the water. he bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges. 

Roebling was born   in 1806  in Mülhausen, Prussia — now part of Germany.  He  received an excellent education ,  learned French  ,   studied architecture and engineering and became fascinated with suspension bridges.   John immigrated to America at age 25 with his brother Karl and other Germans. They settled in western Pennsylvania and founded a farming village they called Saxonburg  in Butler County  near Pittsburgh.    Johns ' eldest son Washington Roebling joined him in his work, and in the 1850s and 1860s they built four suspension bridges.

In 1867 Roebling started design work on what is now called the Brooklyn Bridge.  Two years after  in 1869, just three days after construction began, Roebling's foot was crushed while determining the exact location of the bridge's tower. Suffering from  infection, Roebling died 2 weeks later.    His  son Washington    with help from his wife Emily  continued  direct control over the Brooklyn Bridge's construction.  Under her husband's guidance, Emily studied calculus,   the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction.

Washington made several important improvements on the bridge design.   He designed the two large pneumatic caissons that became the foundations for the two towers. Working in compressed air in these caissons under the river caused him to get decompression sickness   crushing his health.  He became paralyzed and was bound to a wheelchair as a paraplegic for the rest of his life. Unable to work anymore, Washington Roebling could do nothing but sit in his bedroom at his Brooklyn Heights apartment and watch the construction of his family’s masterpiece through a telescope.

His wife Emily   not only cared for her husband, but also became his “assistant engineer”.  She oversaw the daily running of the bridge’s construction, she relayed Washington’s orders to his on-site assistants and made sure that everything ran as smoothly as possible.

The Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883.   A  delegation including the mayor of New York and the President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur, walked from the New York end of the bridge to the Brooklyn tower, where they were greeted by a delegation led by Brooklyn's mayor, Seth Low.  Emily  Roebling was to be the first person to cross the bridge.    Shops closed, bells tolled and people from all over came to witness this grand event.  Massive fireworks display lit the sky at that night 132 years ago, on May 24, 1883.

To be continued...

Verrazano Bridge is 50: The New York's youngest and the hemisphere's longest bridge.

In his letter  sent  to King Francis I of France in July 1524  Giovanni da Verrazzano wrote:  "...we found a very agreeable place  between two small but prominent hills; between them a very wide river, deep at its mouth, flowed out into the sea...". Historians agree that it is the first mention of  Staten Island and the Narrows in written history of the New York Harbor.
 Four hundred and forty years later and fifty years ago  the bridge connecting  two sides of the narrows- Staten Island and Brooklyn  was built. The Italian Historical Society of America suggested  to name the bridge "Verrazano Bridge"  to honor Italian explorer   Giovanni da Verrazzano. Governor Nelson Rockefeller agreed,  but the name was  misspelled - the second  'z'   got dropped  from  the name .   Other suggested names for the bridge included: the Gateway Bridge, the Liberty Bridge and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge. 

Between the late 1800s and about 1935, there were many attempts to build a tunnel between Staten Island and Manhattan. In  1923 the construction of the  Staten Island tunnel  started .The tunnel had to connect railways on Staten Island  to the subway line on the Fourth Avenue  in Brooklyn.  The full plan included   Narrows Tunnel, the 4th Avenue Brooklyn subway, and another tunnel going directly from Staten Island to Manhattan, with stops on the Jersey side of the harbor, and even stations at Liberty and Ellis islands. Because of unexpected costs, the work was stopped.   The abandoned tunnel went 150 feet (45m) into The Narrows  in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.
By the  way there are really two underwater tunnels between Brooklyn and Staten Island,   but these  tunnels, built more than hundred years ago,  are not for  the cars and buses  but for the drinking water. Staten Island is the island in the ocean and  does not have its own source of  drinking water.  In 1970 a new 10-foot diameter  Richmond water  tunnel  was built, so the old water tunnels remain now as a backup.

In 1926, bridge engineer David Steinman proposed a suspension bridge  across the Narrows. Steinmann named it Liberty Bridge.  The proposed bridge was a hybrid of  the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco  and the Brooklyn Bridge with two  800-foot-tall Gothic towers .  The Liberty bridge was never built.
The New York City Board of Transportation floated two additional Narrows Tunnel proposals in 1929 and 1937. All proposals were   shelved because of the Depression, and later, because of World War II.
In 1957  the New York State Legislature and the Board of Estimate approved construction of the new  bridge. The bridge was the brainchild of Robert Moses, who had more influence on New York City that perhaps any other individual in its history. Among Moses's many other projects are  the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel  and  Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.   The bridge, connecting Staten Island to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, was the last major road in Moses's grand plan to connect all of New York by car.
The chief engineer was the great Swiss engineer Othmar Ammann.  The bridge was the last project designed by   Ammann, who had started his career in New York   on the George Washington Bridge in 1927.  When Verrazano bridge opened,  Ammann was 85 years old.

The new   bridge was  so large that its design called for the towers to be angled slightly away from each other to compensate for the curvature of the Earth. Some 12,000 men worked on the bridge; about 1,000 men worked on site during the construction schedule's peak.   About 800 buildings were demolished, requiring the relocation of 7,000 residents.
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened on November 21, 1964, at a cost of $320.1 million. At that time   it was the longest cable suspension bridge in the world.  Today it remains the longest suspension bridge in the United States, spanning 9,865 feet.    On November 22, 1964, the Bay Ridge-St. George, Staten Island ferry went out of business after almost a century’s service.   In 1964  the cost to cross  the bridge  was $0.50.  Now the full fare is  $15.  By 2009, the bridge was generating $1 million every twenty four hours for the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. MTA officials are considering yet another hike on the Verrazano Bridge - the   drivers will pay  $16 cash toll to make the journey from Brooklyn to Staten Island.

There are three amusing  facts that I found about the bridge on Wikipedia:
• Because of thermal expansion of the steel cables, the bridge roadway is 12 feet (3.66 m) lower in summer than in winter
• The bridge's two towers are the tallest structures in New York City outside of Manhattan, and are taller than the tallest non-Manhattan buildings. 
• The cruise ship Queen Mary 2 was redesigned with a flatter funnel to pass under the bridge, and has 13 feet (3.96 m) of clearance under the bridge during high tide.

The construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened many areas of the Staten Island  to residential and commercial development.    Staten Island's population doubled from about 221,000 in 1960 to about 443,000 in 2000.
Verrazano bridge  remains the major commuting artery connecting Staten Island to the rest of New York City, carrying nearly 200,000 drivers each day.  Fifty years ago  years ago  a regular U.S. mail stamp was issued in 1964, celebrating the bridge's opening.

Tomorrow, on the bridge's 50th anniversary   United States Post Office representatives will officially unveil an express mail stamp commemorating the event.