Discover

The 'Brooklyn Bridge', one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, stretches 5,989 feet (1825 m)^[1] over the East River connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. On completion, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world and the first steel-wire suspension bridge. Originally referred to as the 'New York and Brooklyn Bridge', it was dubbed the 'Brooklyn Bridge' in an 1867 letter to the editor of the ''Brooklyn Daily Eagle''.^[2] Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York skyline. In 1964 it was designated a National Historic Landmark.^[3]

Contents

History

Construction

Later changes in use

1994 terrorist attack

2003 Plot

Access points

Trivia

Pedestrian access

Cultural significance

Film

Television

Other media

Panoramas

Gallery

References

External links

Further reading

History

Construction

Construction began in January 3, 1870. The Brooklyn Bridge was completed thirteen years later and was opened for use on May 24, 1883. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost $15.1 million to build and approximately 27 people died during its construction. A week after the opening, on May 30, a rumor that the Bridge was going to break down caused a stampede which crushed and then killed twelve people.
At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world — 50% longer than any previously built — and it has become a treasured landmark. Additionally, for several years the towers were the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The bridge is built from limestone, granite, and Rosendale natural cement. The architecture style is Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers.
The bridge was designed by John Augustus Roebling in Trenton, New Jersey. Roebling had earlier designed and constructed other suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio and the Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, that served as the engineering prototypes for the final design.
During surveying for the East River Bridge project, Roebling's foot was badly injured by a ferry, pinning his foot against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus. His son, Washington, succeeded him, but was stricken with caisson disease (decompression sickness, commonly known as 'the bends'), due to working in compressed air in caissons, in 1872. The occurrence of the disease in the caisson workers caused him to halt construction of the Manhattan side of the tower 30 feet (10 m) short of bedrock when soil tests underneath the caisson found bedrock to be even deeper than expected. Today, the Manhattan tower rests only on sand. ^[4] Washington's wife, Emily Warren Roebling, became his aide, learning engineering and communicating his wishes to the on-site assistants. When the bridge opened, she was the first person to cross it. Washington Roebling rarely visited the site again.
At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s - well after the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and have been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh - by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. This turned out unnecessary, but they are kept for their distinctive beauty.
After the collapse of the I-35W highway bridge in the city of Minneapolis, increased public attention has been brought to the condition of bridges across the US, and it has been reported that the Brooklyn Bridge received a rating of "poor" at its last inspection. According to a NYC Department of Transportation spokesman, "The poor rating it received does not mean it is unsafe. Poor means there are some components that have to be rehabilitated.” A 725 million dollar project to replace the approaches and repaint the bridge is scheduled to begin in 2009.^[5]

Later changes in use

At various times, the bridge has carried horses and trolley traffic; at present, it has six lanes for motor vehicles, with a separate walkway along the centerline for pedestrians and bicycles. Due to the roadway's height (11 feet posted) and weight (6,000 lb posted) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using this bridge. The two inside traffic lanes once carried elevated trains of the BMT from Brooklyn points to a terminal at Park Row. Streetcars ran on what are now the two center lanes (shared with other traffic) until the elevated lines stopped using the bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center tracks. In 1950, the streetcars also stopped running, and the bridge was rebuilt to carry six lanes of automobile traffic.

1994 terrorist attack

Main articles: Brooklyn Bridge Shooting

On March 1, 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened fire on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking 16 year old student Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the bridge. Halberstam died five days later from his wounds. Baz was apparently acting out of revenge for the Hebron massacre of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein that had taken place days earlier on February 25, 1994. Baz was convicted of murder and sentenced to a 141 year prison term. After initially classifying the murder as one committed out of road rage, the FBI reclassified the case in 2000 as a terrorist attack. The entrance ramp to the bridge on the Manhattan side was named the Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp in memory of the victim^[6].

2003 Plot

In 2003, truck driver Iyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support to al-Qaeda, after an earlier plot to destroy the bridge by cutting through its support wires with blowtorches was cancelled.

Access points

The Brooklyn Bridge is accessible from the Brooklyn entrances of Tillary/Adams Streets, Sands/Pearl Streets, and Exit 28B of the eastbound Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In Manhattan, motor cars can enter from either direction of the FDR Drive, Park Row, Chambers/Centre Streets, and Pearl/Frankfort Streets. Pedestrian access to the bridge from the Brooklyn side is from either Tillary/Adams Streets (in between the auto entrance/exit), or a staircase on Prospect St between Cadman Plaza East and West. In Manhattan, the pedestrian walkway is accessible from the end of Centre Street, or through the unpaid south staircase of Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall IRT subway station.

Trivia

★ The three bridges that span the East River and connect Manhattan to Brooklyn are arranged, from South to North, according to the mnemonic BMW: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge.

★ The BMT bridge tracks were planned to connect to what is now the Nassau Street Line subway at Chambers Street to form part of the never-finished Centre Street Loop.

★ On March 24, 1983 the bridge was designated a National Historic Engineering Landmark.

★ The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in the 1972 book ''The Great Bridge'' by David McCullough and in the first PBS documentary film ever made by Ken Burns, ''Brooklyn Bridge'' (1980). Burns drew heavily on McCullough's book for the film and used him as narrator.

★ The first person to jump from the bridge was Robert E. Odlum on July 23, 1886. Robert, a swimming teacher, made the jump in a costume bearing his initials. He survived the pre-announced jump, but died shortly thereafter from internal injuries.^[7]

Pedestrian access

The Brooklyn Bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway open to walkers and cyclists, in the center of the bridge and higher than the automobile lanes. While the bridge has always permitted the passage of pedestrians across its span, its role in allowing thousands to cross takes on a special importance in times of difficulty when usual means of crossing the East River have become unavailable.
During transit strikes by the Transport Workers Union in 1980 and 2005 the bridge was used by people commuting to work, with Mayors Koch and Bloomberg crossing the bridge as a gesture to the affected public. Following the 1965, 1977 and 2003 Blackouts and most famously after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the bridge was used by people in Manhattan to leave the city after subway service was suspended.

Cultural significance

Contemporaries marveled at what technology was capable of and the bridge became a symbol of the optimism of the time. John Perry Barlow wrote in the late 20th century of the "literal and genuinely religious leap of faith" embodied in the Brooklyn Bridge … the Brooklyn Bridge required of its builders faith in their ability to control technology."^[8]
References to "selling the Brooklyn Bridge" abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. For example, "If you believe 'that', I have a wonderful bargain for you…" References are often nowadays more oblique, such as "I could sell you some lovely riverside property in Brooklyn ... ". George C. Parker and William McCloundy are two early 20th-century con-men who had (allegedly)successfully perpetrated this scam on unwitting tourists.[1]
In his second book ''The Bridge'', Hart Crane begins with a poem entitled "Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge." The bridge was a source of inspiration for Crane and he owned different apartments specifically to have different views of the bridge.
Kurt Vonnegut references the sale of the Brooklyn Bridge in his 1987 novel Bluebeard. "If I had taken his money, it would have been like selling him Brooklyn Bridge."

Film

★ The Bugs Bunny cartoon "Bowery Bugs" "explains" the legend of why Steve Brodie jumped from the bridge, and ends with Bugs closing a sale of the bridge to the person to whom he has narrated the story. Although Steve Brodie was a real saloon owner operating near the bridge, his 1886 leap is widely believed to be a self-promoting myth.

★ In the 1982 film ''Sophie's Choice'', writer Nathan Landau (played by Kevin Kline) stands on the bridge with his lover Sophie (Meryl Streep) and his protégé Stingo (Peter MacNicol) evoking the names of great Brooklyn writers such as Herman Melville and Hart Crane.

★ In Disney's 1988 film ''Oliver & Company'', the Brooklyn Bridge is depicted having subway railroads. It was first shown when the villain Sykes goes after Fagin, Jenny, and their pets.

★ In the 1992 movie ''Newsies'', Jack Kelly (Christian Bale) and Boots (Arvie Lowe Jr.) scream off the Brooklyn Bridge on their way to see Spot Conlon (Gabriel Damon) in Brooklyn.

★ In the 1998 American version of ''Godzilla'', Zilla runs across the bridge, toppling one of the towers and ending up tangled in the suspension cables.

★ In the 1998 film ''Deep Impact'', a tsunami caused by a comet crashing into the Atlantic Ocean destroyed the bridge.

★ The Brooklyn Bridge is featured at the end of Martin Scorsese's ''Gangs of New York'', in the 1973 James Bond film ''Live and Let Die'', and in the 2004 film ''.

★ The DVD cover for the 1998 film ''The Siege'' shows an image of the Brooklyn Bridge being destroyed in a terrorist attack. In the film this attack is not shown, although the bridge is used as an escape from Manhattan during terrorist attacks.

★ The movie ''Virginal Young Blondes'' (2004) also takes place on the Brooklyn Bridge, when the two main characters get stoned together in the movie's last scenes.

★ In the 2001 movie ''Kate and Leopold'', the Brooklyn Bridge is where a time warp is calculated to open up at certain times which takes one back to the time the "great erection" as it is called by Roebling in the film is being built.

★ The bridge is prominently featured in the 2005 film ''Fantastic Four'', starring Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis. Scenes depicting the roadway of the bridge were actually filmed on a set in Vancouver, Canada using a green screen and CGI (Computer-generated imagery) technology.

★ In the 2005 film ''Stay'' the bridge play a significant role in the ending of the movie.

★ The 2006 movie ''Night at the Museum'' begins with an uncredited cameo of the bridge.

★ In 2006's ''Superman Returns'', the bridge is seen in several scenes. In addition, Superman and Lois Lane fly parallel to the bridge.

Television

★ A TV show called ''Brooklyn Bridge'' aired in prime time from 1991 through 1993 on CBS.

★ An aerial view of the Brooklyn Bridge, in winter, with snow on the pedestrian path, is featured in the opening sequence to ''Law and Order SVU''

★ A dramatization of the challenges faced by the Roebling family during construction of the bridge are portrayed in the BBC documentary series ''Seven Wonders of the Industrial World''.

★ On ''The Fairly OddParents'', a short scene of the world laughing at the end of the episode "Information Stupor Highway" shows New York City laughing with an animated Brooklyn Bridge.

★ The span is seen in several episodes of ''The Cosby Show''.

★ The bridge is used in the season 3 opener of '', "People with Money", where a young couple was murdered while allegedly "having sex". A woman in this episode was attacked by a keychain knife, leading the detectives to investigate the heinous crime.

★ In the cartoon ''The Fairly OddParents'', Cosmo tells Timmy that a man sold him the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge.

★ The music video for Taking Back Sunday's "You're So Last Summer" features the bridge as a backdrop.

★ In '', the bridge is seen destroyed after an earthquake strikes New York City.

★ In an episode of the NBC situation comedy ''Night Court'', a man claims that the city of New York cashed his check for the Brooklyn Bridge, therefore he was the new rightful owner.

★ The bridge appeared in three country music videos in 1994: "I'm Holding My Own" (Lee Roy Parnell), "The City Put The Country Back In Me" (Neil McCoy), and "When Love Finds You" (Vince Gill).

★ The Bridge appeared in Lil' Kim "Lighters Up (Welcome to Brooklyn)" music video and Foxy Brown "BK Anthem".

Other media

★ In Grand Theft Auto IV the bridge appears in Liberty City as Broker Bridge.

★ A German stamp of 2006 shows the bridge.

★ The bridge is part of the cover of the book ''Twin Towers''.

★ The bridge is part of the cover of the schoolbook ''English G2000 A4''.

★ The bridge is featured in ''SimCity 3000'', and in ''SimCity 4: Rush Hour'' as the "Medium Suspension" bridge type for avenues and highways.

★ The bridge was blown up by Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in an issue of ''Ultimate X-Men''.

★ In ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' comic books (issue #121), Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, is kidnapped and held at a bridge by the Green Goblin. The artwork depicts the Brooklyn Bridge, but the editor mistakenly labelled it as the George Washington Bridge.

★ In the 1998 video game '', the New York Downtown course begins at the Brooklyn end of the bridge, and proceeds to the Civic Center of Lower Manhattan before turning north towards Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village. The bridge is bypassed on subsequent laps, in much the same way as the Golden Gate Bridge in the game's predecessor, San Francisco Rush, and the player is barred from re-entering it once he/she has left it.

★ The "Money Song" from ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' features the line "And my dollar bills could buy the Brooklyn Bridge".

★ The bridge appears in the Xbox 360 racing game Project Gotham Racing 3.

★ Irish rock band U2 played a free concert under the bridge at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park on November 22, 2004 in support of their album released that day, ''How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.'' Select songs from the concert were later released in December 2004 in the digital EP through iTunes, ''Live from Under the Brooklyn Bridge''.

★ Australian musician Darren Hanlon wrote a song titled Brooklyn Bridge for his Little Chills album.

★ The play ''A View from the Bridge'' by Arthur Miller is a reference to the Brooklyn Bridge which was symbolic of the link between American life in Manhattan and the Italian way of living in communities in Brooklyn.

★ A replica of the bridge appears in the Namco video game '' in a fictional college town called Bana City. The replica bridge is called Marvin Bridge. In the scenario terrorists use nerve gas in the city which leads to pursuit of a van. The crisis was settled with neutralizers dropped from the air, and the terrorists were arrested in the middle of the bridge. Mission 11b - Reprisal.

★ In the anime ''Negima!'', a battle takes place on a bridge with a design based on, possibly identical, to the Brooklyn Bridge.

★ The bridge is shown in the opening theme of the 1980s sitcom ''Who's the Boss''.

★ The anime ''Legendz'' shows many screenshots of the Brooklyn Bridge as well as having a few monster battles near and on it.

Panoramas

Gallery

References

1. NYCDOT Bridges Information
2. Brooklyn Bridge 1867
3. National Park Service, National Historic Landmark survey (New York), retrieved May 27, 2007.
4. GlassSteelandStone: Brooklyn Bridge-tower rests on sand
5. Brooklyn Bridge called ‘safe’ - DOT says span is okay despite getting a ‘poor’ rating
6. Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp
7. Life Magazine May 24, 1954
8. Cultural Significance

External links

★ New York City DOT Brooklyn Bridge webcam

★ Interactive Map of Brooklyn Bridge and South Street Seaport: MondoMap

★ NYCroads.com - Brooklyn Bridge

★ Transportation Alternatives Fiboro Bridges - Brooklyn Bridge

★

★ The story of Brooklyn Bridge - by CBS Forum

★ Panorama of Brooklyn Bridge 1899 - Extreme Photo Constructions

★ Great Buildings entry for the Brooklyn Bridge

★ American Society of Civil Engineers

★ Railroad Extra - Brooklyn Bridge and its Railway

★

★ Images of the Brooklyn Bridge from the Brooklyn Museum's art, archives, and library collections, and the text from our 1983 catalog, The Great East River Bridge

Further reading

★ McCullough, David. (1972). ''The Great Bridge''. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21213-3

★ Cadbury, Deborah (2004), ''Dreams of Iron and Steel'', New York, NY, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-00-716307-X

★ Haw, Richard. (2005), "The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History", New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, ISBN 0-8135-3587-5