Manuscript Sources
There are two collections of Roebling manuscript papers: the Roebling Collections in the Library of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, and in the Special Collections of the Library of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Both are of vast scope and value and have been almost totally ignored by all but two or three scholars.
The latter collection contains numerous notebooks, ledgers, diaries, and other documents belonging to John A. Roebling, in addition to his philosophical papers, patents, numerous drawings, sketches, and the early papers and records of John A. Roebling’s Sons. But the most important part of the collection, so far as the telling of this story, is the file of Washington Roebling’s correspondence. The letters cover a span of nearly seventy years and include, for example, all of his war letters to Emily, plus those written to his son in the years after the completion of the bridge. This correspondence has been carefully arranged by the late Clarence E. Case, a prominent New Jersey attorney and friend of the Roebling family. Like everything else in the collection the letters are readily accessible. Interested scholars ought to be warned, however, that in editing the letters for a typed transcription, Mr. Case cut a great deal that he considered of too personal or too technical a nature.
The RPI collection is the larger of the two and contains far more concerning the Brooklyn Bridge. It includes hundreds of letters, notebooks, reports, cashbooks, and personal memorandums relating to the careers of both John A. and Washington Roebling. It includes drawings of all of John A. Roebling’s bridges, his various preparatory schemes for the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, numerous plans and blueprints of the bridge, photographs, and his private library. It includes the notes he kept during the spiritualist séances of 1867, Washington Roebling’s letters from Europe that same year, and two large scrapbooks kept by Emily Roebling from April 1876 to October 1882. Most important of all, it includes the letter books and private notes kept by Washington and Emily Roebling during the years the bridge was being built. Recently the entire collection was classified and catalogued for the first time by Robert M. Vogel of the Smithsonian Institution, with a grant from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Newspapers, Magazines, and Technical Journals
Use was made of numerous newspapers, magazines, and technical journals. Many of these were in the form of clippings included in the scrapbooks kept by Emily Roebling; the rest were consulted in various libraries. Of the papers consulted the most valuable by far was the Brooklyn Eagle.
Newspapers: Boston Post, Brooklyn Argus, Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn Leader, Brooklyn Union, Brooklyn Union and Argus, Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Cold Spring Recorder, Coney Island Sun, Long Island Star, New York Commercial Advertiser, New York Daily Graphic, New York Daily Witness, New York Evening Express, New York Evening Mail, New York Evening Post, New York Evening Telegram, New York Herald, New York Independent, New York Mail and Express, New York Mercury, New York Star,New York Sun, New York Times, New York Tribune, New York World, Newport Daily News, Niagara Falls Gazette, Pittsburgh Gazette, Trenton Daily State Gazette, Troy Record.
Magazines and technical journals: American Heritage, American Railroad Journal, Appletons Journal, Architects and Mechanics’ Journal, Beecher’s Magazine, Brooklyn Monthly, Civil Engineering, Engineering (London), Engineering News, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Harper’s Weekly, The Iron Age, Journal of the Franklin Institute, Mechanics (New York), The New Yorker, Puck, The Railroad Gazette, St. Nicholas Magazine, Scientific American, Transactions(American Society of Civil Engineers), Van Nostrand’s Eclectic Engineering Magazine, Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine.
Works Relating Directly to the Brooklyn Bridge
Barnard, Charles, “The Brooklyn Bridge.” St. Nicholas Magazine, July 1883.
Barnes, A. C., The New York and Brooklyn Bridge. (Pamphlet) Brooklyn, 1883.
Brooklyn Bridge: 1883-1933. Published by the City of New York Department of Plant and Structures, 1933.
Conant, William C., “The Brooklyn Bridge.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, May 1883.
East River Bridge, Laws and Engineer’s Reports, 1868-1884. Brooklyn, 1885. (This very rare volume contains all of the following, most of which were published separately during the time the bridge was being built.)
An Act to amend an act entitled “An Act to incorporate the New York Bridge Company, for the purpose of constructing and maintaining a bridge over the East River, between the cities of New York and Brooklyn,” passed April sixteenth, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, and to provide for the speedy construction of said bridge. Chapter 601. Passed June 5, 1874.
An Act to establish a bridge across the East River, between the cities of Brooklyn and New York, in the State of New York, a post road. Public, No. 53. Approved by Congress March 3, 1869.
An Act to incorporate the New York Bridge Company, for the purpose of constructing and maintaining a bridge over the East River, between the cities of New York and Brooklyn. Chapter 399. Passed April 16, 1867.
An Act providing that the bridge in the course of construction over the East River, between the cities of New York and Brooklyn, by the New York Bridge Company, shall be a public work of the cities of New York and Brooklyn, and for the dissolution of said Company, and the completion and management of the said bridge by the said cities. Chapter 300. Passed May 14, 1875.
Collingwood, Francis, A Few Facts about the Caissons of the East River Bridge. Paper read at the third annual convention of the American Society of Civil Engineers, June 21, 1871; printed originally in ASCE Transactions; also Engineering (London), February 16 and 23, 1872.
_____ The Foundations for the Brooklyn Anchorage of the East River Bridge. Paper read before the American Society of Civil Engineers, June 10, 1874; in Transactions.
_____ Further Notes on the Caissons of the East River Bridge. Paper read at the fourth annual convention of the American Society of Civil Engineers, June 5-6, 1872; in Transactions; also Engineering (London), October 18 and 25, 1872.
_____ Notes on the Masonry of the East River Bridge. Paper read before the American Society of Civil Engineers, November 1, 1876; in Transactions.
_____ Progress of Work at the East River Bridge. Paper read before the American Society of Civil Engineers, June 17, 1879; in Transactions.
Kingsley, William C., First Annual Report of the General Superintendent of the East River Bridge. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1870.
_____ Report of the General Superintendent, New York Bridge Company. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1871.
_____ Report of the General Superintendent of the New York Bridge Company. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1872.
Martin, C. C., Report of the Chief Engineer and Superintendent of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, June 1, 1884. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1884.
Report of the Executive Committee of the New York Bridge Company, June 1, 1872. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1872.
Report of the Officers of the New York Bridge Company to the Board of Directors, February, 1875. Eagle Print, Brooklyn, 1875.
Reports of Assistant Engineers and Master Mechanic, 1875-1876.
Roebling, John A., Report of John A. Roebling, C.E., to the President and Directors of the New York Bridge Company, on the Proposed East River Bridge. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1870.
Roebling, Washington A., Communication from Chief Engineer W. A. Roebling, In Regard to the Method of Steam Transit Over the East River Bridge. March 4, 1878.
_____ First Annual Report of the Chief Engineer of The East River Bridge. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1870.
_____ Pneumatic Tower Foundations of the East River Suspension Bridge. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1872.
_____ Report of the Chief Engineer to the Board of Directors of the New York Bridge Company, June 5, 1871. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1871.
_____ Report of the Chief Engineer of the East River Bridge on Prices of Materials and Estimated Cost of the Structure. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, June 28, 1872.
_____ Report of the Chief Engineer of the New York Bridge Company, 1874. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1874.
_____ Report of the Chief Engineer of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, January 1, 1877. Eagle Print, Brooklyn, 1877.
_____ Report of the Chief Engineer on the Strength of the Cables and Suspended Superstructure of the Bridge, Made to the Board of Trustees, January 9, 1882.
_____ Report of the Chief Engineer on the Tests of the Samples of Wire, 1876.
_____ Third Annual Report of the Chief Engineer, June 1, 1872. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1872.
Smith, Andrew H., M.D., The Effects of High Atmospheric Pressure, Including the Caisson Disease. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, Brooklyn, 1873.
Specifications for Anchor Plates, New York Anchorage, East River Bridge, 1875.
Specifications for Corners, Facing and Archstone, of Granite, Required for the New York Anchorage, East River Bridge, 1875.
Specifications for Cut Face-stone, Backing and Archstone of Limestone, Required for the New York Anchorage, East River Bridge, 1875.
Specifications for Cut Face-stone and Backing, Limestone and Granite, Required for the New York Anchorage, East River Bridge, 1875.
Specifications for Granite Cut Stone, Required for the Parapets at the roadway, Brooklyn and New York Towers, East River Bridge, 1876.
Specifications for Granite Face-stone and Archstone, Required for the New York Tower, East River Bridge, April, 1875.
Specifications for Iron Anchor Bars, New York Anchorage, East River Bridge, April, 1875.
Specifications for Saddles and Saddle-Plates for the Brooklyn and New York Towers, East River Bridge, 1874.
Specifications for Steel Cable Wire, for the East River Suspension Bridge—1876.
Specifications for Wire Ropes for the East River Bridge.
Farrington, E. F., Concise Description of the East River Bridge, with Full Details of the Construction. (Pamphlet) C. D. Wynkoop, New York, 1881. Republished in 1969 by Boro Book Store, Brooklyn.
Green, S. W., A Complete History of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge from its Conception in 1866 to its Completion in 1883, with Sketches of the Lives of J. A. Roebling, W. A. Roebling, and H. C. Murphy. (Pamphlet) New York, 1883.
An Illustrated Description of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. (Pamphlet) Published by John A. Roebling’s Sons, Trenton, no date.
New York and Brooklyn Bridge Proceedings, 1867-1884. Brooklyn, 1885. (This thick invaluable volume contains the only records kept of the meetings of the directors—later the trustees—of the Bridge Company, the meetings of the Executive Committee, lists of the stockholders at various periods during the construction of the bridge, lists of real estate purchased, plus all other reports, letters, etc., emanating from the Bridge Company during the time from May 1867 to June 1884.)
Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn, 1883.
Report of the Board of Consulting Engineers to the Directors of the New York Bridge Company. The Standard Press Print, Brooklyn, 1869.
Schuyler, Montgomery, “The Bridge as a Monument.” Harper’s Weekly, May 24, 1883. Also included in Lewis Mumford’s Roots of Contemporary American Architecture, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, New York, 1952; paperback edition, Grove Press, New York, 1959.
Testimony in the Miller Suit to Remove the East River Bridge. Albany, 1879.
Trachtenberg, Alan, Brooklyn Bridge; Fact and Symbol. (An excellent analysis of the bridge as a cultural symbol in America.) Oxford University Press, New York, 1965.
Works Relating to John A. and Washington A. Roebling
There is no first-rate biography of either John A. or Washington A. Roebling. The closest thing to it and the one reliable source of family history is The Roeblings; A Century of Engineers, Bridgebuilders and Industrialists by Hamilton Schuyler, Princeton University Press, 1931. Other works consulted were these:
Farrington, E. F., A Full and Complete Description of the Covington and Cincinnati Suspension Bridge with Dimensions and Details of Construction. Cincinnati, 1867.
John A. Roebling. An Account of the Ceremonies at the Unveiling of a Monument to His Memory; Address by H. Estabrook. Roebling Press, Trenton, 1908.
Roebling, John A., Diary of My Journey from Muehlhausen in Thuringia via Bremen to the United States of North America in the Year 1831, trans. by Edward Underwood. Roebling Press, Trenton, 1931.
_____ Final Report of John A. Roebling, Civil Engineer, to the President and Directors of the Niagara Falls Suspension and Niagara Falls International Bridge Companies. Rochester, N. Y., 1855
_____ “The Great Central Railroad from Philadelphia to St. Louis.” American Railroad Journal, Special Edition, 1847.
_____ “Letters to Ferdinand Baehr, 1831.” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, June 1935.
_____ Long and Short Span Railway Bridges. (Includes an introduction by Washington Roebling.) D. Van Nostrand, New York, 1869.
_____ Report to the President and Board of Directors of the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge Company. Trenton, 1867.
Roebling, Washington A., Early History of Saxonburg. Trenton, 1924.
Steinman, D. B., The Builders of the Bridge. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1945. (The author was a famous bridgebuilder himself and was long considered the authority on John A. Roebling. His book, however, was based on superficial research and contains many inaccuracies.)
Vogel, Robert M., Roebling’s Delaware and Hudson Canal Aqueducts. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D. C., 1971.
Books on Bridges and Bridgebuilders
Dorsey, Florence L., Road to the Sea. Rinehart & Company, New York, 1947.
Gies, Joseph, Bridges and Men. Doubleday and Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1963.
Gilbert, Ralph W., Jr., and Billington, David P., “The Eads Bridge and Nineteenth-Century River Politics.” Paper read at the First National Conference on Civil Engineering: History, Heritage and the Humanities, Princeton University, 1970.
Jacobs, David, and Neville, Anthony E., Bridges, Canals and Tunnels. American Heritage Publishing Company, New York, 1968.
Jakkula, A. A., A History of Suspension Bridges in Bibliographical Form. Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, College Station, Texas, 1941.
Kirby, Richard Shelton, and Laurson, Philip Gustave, The Early Years of Modern Civil Engineering. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1932.
Pope, Thomas, A Treatise on Bridge Architecture, in which the Superior Advantages of the Flying Pendent Lever Bridge are Fully Proved. New York, 1811.
Steinman, David B., and Watson, Sara Ruth, Bridges and Their Builders, 2nd rev. ed. Dover Publications, New York, 1957.
Stuart, C. B., Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America. D. Van Nostrand, New York, 1871.
Vose, George L., Bridge Disasters in America. Boston, 1887.
White, Joseph, and Von Bernewitz, M. W., The Bridges of Pittsburgh. Cramer Printing and Publishing Company, Pittsburgh, 1928.
Woodward, C. M., A History of the St. Louis Bridge. G. I. Jones and Company, St. Louis, 1881.
General Works
An Account of the Dinner by the Hamilton Club to Honor James S. T. Stranahan, December 13, 1888. Brooklyn, 1889. Collection of the Long Island Historical Society.
Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams. Houghton Miffin Company, Sentry Edition, Boston, 1961.
Albion, Robert Greenhalgh, The Rise of New York Port (1815-1860). Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1939.
Andrist, Ralph K., ed., The Confident Years. American Heritage Publishing Company, New York, 1969.
Blake, William, History of Putnam County, New York. New York, 1849.
Botkin, B. A., ed., New York City Folklore. Random House, New York, 1956.
The Brooklyn City and Business Directory, 1869, 1870.
Brown, Dee, The Year of the Century: 1876. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1966.
Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth. Macmillan and Company, New York and London, 1895.
Buck, Solon J. and Elizabeth Hawthorn, The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1939.
Butterfield, Roger, The American Past. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966.
Callender, James H., Yesterdays on Brooklyn Heights. The Dorland Press, New York, 1927.
Callow, Alexander B., Jr., The Tweed Ring. Oxford University Press, New York, 1966.
Carnegie, Andrew, Autobiography. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1920.
Catton, Bruce, Grant Moves South. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1960.
_____ A Stillness at Appomattox. Doubleday and Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1954.
The City of Brooklyn. (A guidebook, probably written by Henry R. Stiles.) New York, 1871.
Condit, Carl W., American Building. University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Craig, Neville B., The Olden Time, Vol. I. Pittsburgh, 1846.
Davis, Andrew Jackson, Free Thoughts Concerning Religion. Boston, 1854.
_____ The Magic Staff, An Autobiography. New York, 1857.
Ellis, Edward Robb, The Epic of New York. Coward-McCann, New York, 1966.
Fiftieth Anniversary Program. Putnam County Historical Society.
Fiske, Stephen, Off-Hand Portraits of Prominent New Yorkers. George R. Lockwood and Son, New York, 1884.
Foster, L. H., Newport Guide. 1876.
Franco, Barbara, “The Cardiff Giant: A Hundred-Year-Old Hoax.” New York History, October 1969.
Genung, Abram, The Frauds of the N.Y.C. Government Exposed. New York, 1871.
George, Henry, Social Problems. New York, 1883.
Hansen, Marcus Lee, The Immigrant in American History. Harvard University Press, 1940.
Historical Sketch of the Fulton Ferry. Brooklyn, 1879.
History of Butler County, Pennsylvania. Waterman, Watkins and Company, Chicago, 1883.
Howard, Henry W. B., ed., History of The City of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, 1893.
Johnston, Johanna, Mrs. Satan. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1967.
Josephson, Matthew, Edison. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1959.
Josephson, Matthew and Hannah, Al Smith, Hero of the Cities. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1969.
Kaplan, Justin, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966.
Keller, Morton, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast. Oxford University Press, New York, 1968.
W. C. Kingsley. Privately published, Brooklyn, 1885. Collection of the Long Island Historical Society.
Kouwenhoven, John A., The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York. Doubleday and Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1953.
Lancaster, Clay, Old Brooklyn Heights. Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vt., 1961.
Lorant, Stefan, ed., Pittsburgh; The Story of an American City. Doubleday and Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1964.
Lyman, Colonel Theodore, Meade’s Headquarters. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1922.
Lynch, Denis Tilden, “Boss” Tweed. Boni and Liveright, New York, 1927.
McCabe, James B., Jr., Lights and Shadows of New York Life, National Publishing Company, Philadelphia, 1872.
Mumford, John Kimberly, Outspinning the Spider. New York, 1921.
Mumford, Lewis, Sticks and Stones. Boni and Liveright, New York, 1924.
_____ The Brown Decades. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1931.
Murphy, Mary Ellen, and others, eds., A Treasury of Brooklyn. William Sloane Associates, New York, 1949.
Nevins, Allan, Abram S. Hewitt. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1935.
_____ Grover Cleveland; A Study in Courage. Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1932.
New York at Gettysburg, Vol. III. J. B. Lyon Company, Albany, 1900.
The Newport Directory, 1882.
Old Brooklyn Heights. Brooklyn Savings Bank, 1927.
Overton, Jacqueline, Long Island’s Story. Doubleday, Doran and Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1929.
Pelletreau, William S., History of Putnam County, New York. Philadelphia, 1886.
Roebling, Emily Warren, The Journal of the Reverend Silas Constant. J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1903.
Rourke, Constance Mayfield, Trumpets of Jubilee. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1927.
Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and The War Years. 1-vol. ed. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1954.
Scully, Vincent, Jr., Modern Architecture. George Braziller, New York, 1961.
Shaplen, Robert, “The Beecher-Tilton Case.” The New Yorker, June 5 and 12, 1954.
Smith, Matthew Hale, Sunshine and Shadow in New York, J. B. Burr and Company, Hartford, 1868.
Stiles, Henry R., The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History and Commercial and Industrial Record of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884. Munsell and Company, New York, 1884.
_____ A History of the City of Brooklyn: Including the Old Town and Village of Brooklyn, the Town of Bushwick, and the Village and City of Williamsburg. 3 vols. Brooklyn, 1867-1870.
Still, Bayrd, Mirror for Gotham. New York University Press, 1956.
Strong, George Templeton, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1952.
Stryker, Roy, and Seidenberg, Mel, A Pittsburgh Album, 1758-1958. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, 1959.
Sullivan, Louis, The Autobiography of an Idea. Dover Publications, New York, 1956.
Swanberg, W. A., Jim Fisk: The Career of an Improbable Rascal. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1959.
_____ Pulitzer. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1967.
Syrett, Harold Coffin, The City of Brooklyn, 1865-1898. Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, No. 512, New York, 1944.
Taylor, Emerson Gifford, Gouverneur Kemble Warren. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1932.
Trollope, Anthony, North America. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1951.
Twain, Mark, and Warner, Charles Dudley, The Gilded Age. American Publishing Company, Hartford, 1873.
The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, Emory Holloway, ed. New York, 1932.
Wall, Joseph Frazier, Andrew Carnegie. Oxford University Press, New York, 1970.
Weld, Ralph Foster, Brooklyn Village, 1816-1834. Columbia University Press, New York, 1938.
Werner, M. R., Tammany Hall. Doubleday, Doran and Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1928.
Whitman, Walt, The Portable Walt Whitman. The Viking Press, New York, 1945.
Reference Works
Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York, 1888.
Bartlett, John, Familiar Quotations. Thirteenth and Centennial Edition, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1955.
Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1961. U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1961.
Dictionary of American Biography. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1937.
Encyclopedia Americana.
Keller, Helen Rex, The Dictionary of Dates. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1934.
The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. Merck, Sharp, and Dohme Research Laboratories, 1966.
National Cyclopedia of American Biography.
Sodeman, William A., M.D., and Sodeman, William A., Jr., M.D., Pathologic Physiology. W. B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1967.
White, Norval, and Willensky, Elliot, eds., AIA Guide to New York City. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1968.
*The Pittsburgh Gazette made much of the fact that the structure was strong enough to carry the water plus six heavily loaded barges all at the same time, the editors being unaware apparently that the boats merely displaced their own weight and so the total load remained the same, whether boats were crossing or not.
* Eads had completed the east abutment of his bridge in early April of 1871, with his caisson an incredible 136 feet below the Mississippi. Eads too was having trouble with advancing expenses, with construction costing about double his original estimate, but in October 1871, before work had even begun inside the New York caisson, Eads had written that all the most formidable difficulties had now been surmounted.
* The anchorages were in fact built entirely of limestone, with the exception of the corners, front arches, and the cornice. There was also about 650 cubic yards of granite placed directly over the anchor plates.
* In 1877 a group of architects would be called in as consultants on Hildenbrand’s plans. The best known of them was George B. Post, who was then designing a lofty new Queen Anne-style home for the Long Island Historical Society, at Pierrepont and Clinton Streets, and who would later do the New York Stock Exchange (1903).
* Years later, at Quebec, a huge bridge partly designed by Cooper, by then an engineer of national prominence, would collapse during construction, killing seventy-five men. On hearing the news Roebling would write scathingly of engineers who design bridges but do not give the actual construction their personal attention. “It is one thing to sit in your office and split hairs,” he would write, “but a different thing to get out and command men and meet the realities of great construction.” Ironically, Roebling was unaware, it seems, that Cooper had not been at Quebec because of his health.
* Prior to this time, cables were made of “bright” wire, which was oiled, greased, or painted for protection against the elements.
* At least one photographer had already been to the top of the Brooklyn tower, J. H. Beals, who earlier in the year had made the first great panoramic photograph of lower Manhattan, from the Battery to Rutgers Street, by taking five different views that he later spliced together into one panorama more than seven feet long.
* Crucible steel, steel made in comparatively small quantities in crucibles, or casts, was considered the finest-grade steel and was used principally for tools. Bessemer steel, made in a “converter” according to a process developed by the Englishman Henry Bessemer twenty years earlier, was the least expensive steel on the market, the kind used in the greatest quantity in the 1870’s and for rails chiefly. Between the two, crucible steel was thought to be markedly superior but the quality control of Bessemer steel had, in fact, been perfected to a remarkable degree by Carnegie and others. It could be produced in far greater quantity and was without question a perfectly respectable product.
* The Ashtabula disaster was only the worst of hundreds of bridge failures of the time. Something like forty bridges a year fell in the 1870’s—or about one out of every four built. In the 1880’s some two hundred more fell. Highway bridge failures were the most common, but the railroad bridge failures received the greatest publicity and cost the most lives.
* One of these firsthand accounts of crossing the footbridge was an entire fabrication, Farrington said later, but he never indicated which one it was. The day the reporter appeared at the bridge, Farrington had told him it was too windy for an inexperienced man to go out. Immensely relieved the reporter had returned to his paper, only to be told by the editor that he was to get the story wind or no wind. So he had retired to a quiet place, sat down, and drawn on his imagination.
* There was so much talk about her, in fact, that at the next alumni gathering, a year later, a Brooklyn engineer named Rossiter W. Raymond, who was not an RPI graduate, but was widely known as an afterdinner speaker, was asked to come and give a special toast. (Raymond had such a grandiloquent platform manner that he would one day be invited to succeed Beecher at Plymouth Church, an invitation he declined.) “Gentlemen, I know that the name of a woman should not be lightly spoken in a public place,” he said to his hushed audience, “…but I believe you will acquit me any lack of delicacy or of reverence when I utter what lies at this moment half articulate upon all your lips, the name of Mrs. Washington Roebling.”
* The East River bridge was to be larger in every way. The river span of the Cincinnati Bridge was 1,057 feet, or 543 feet less than what Roebling had projected for the East River. The over-all length of the Cincinnati Bridge, 2,252 feet, was less than half the length, and its width, 36 feet, was also less than half that of the new bridge Roebling had planned.
* There is no official figure for the number of men killed building the bridge. The Bridge Company compiled no list, kept no precise records on the subject, which is characteristic of the age. In a booklet made up from his Cooper Union talks and published after the bridge was built, Farrington says between thirty and forty men died in the work, which is especially interesting if it is remembered that Emily Roebling may have done Farrington’s writing for him. The Chief Engineer and William Kingsley, however, both said twenty had died and from the deaths reported in the papers and mentioned here and there in the minutes of Bridge Company meetings that seems to be a realistic figure.
* Apart from any interest he had in the lighting contract, Thomas Edison was enormously fascinated by the bridge and spent hours watching its progress. He also took some extraordinary movies, among the earliest he made, of the final weeks of construction.
* Joseph Pennell, Joseph Stella, John Marin, Childe Hassam, Georgia O’Keeffe, O. Louis Guglielmi, Raoul Dufy, Ludwig Bemelmans, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Gleizes, and Max Weber are some of the artists who have taken the bridge as their subject. Several, such as Marin and Stella, have gone back to it many times. Stella’s powerful abstraction The Bridge (1918) is probably the best known of all the paintings.
* The first subway, between Bowling Green, in Manhattan, and Joralemon Street, was completed in 1908; and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, opened in 1950, is one of the longest underwater tunnels in the world.
* With careful editing and numerous annotations she managed to turn a rather dry, colorless diary kept by a Putnam County preacher into an engaging chronicle. She also included an additional chapter on the Warren family. Titled The Journal of the Reverend Silas Constant, it was published in 1903.
* All figures are based on the bridge as it was when completed in 1883.
* The most famous latter-day example of this same phenomenon was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, over Puget Sound, in the state of Washington. On November 7, 1940, in a high wind, “Galloping Gertie,” as the bridge became known, began heaving up and down so violently that it soon shook itself to pieces. The bridge lacked “aerodynamic stability” the experts concluded, for the simple reason that the necessary stiffness preached by Roebling had been overlooked by the designer. Eyewitness accounts of the disaster are strikingly reminiscent of the one from the Wheeling Intelligencer, written nearly ninety years before.
* The full title of the translated work, published in 1867, was as follows: A Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies, in 1679—80. By Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, of Wiewerd, in Friesland. Murphy’s other translations include: The Representation of New Netherland (1849), from the Dutch of Adriaen van der Donck, and Voyages from Holland to America (1853), from the Dutch of D. P. deVries. He also wrote Henry Hudson in Holland (1859) and Voyage of Verrazzano (1875), in which he took the mistaken view that Verrazzano’s claims of discovery were unfounded.
* In his Autobiography, Carnegie would tell the story of a personable mechanic named Piper who was sent by the Keystone company to help on the St. Louis bridge. “At first he was so delighted with having received the largest contract that had yet been let, that he was all graciousness to Captain Eads. It was not even ‘Captain’ at first, but ‘Colonel Eads, how do you do? Delighted to see you.’” But presently feelings between them became a little complicated. “We noticed the greeting became less cordial.” Colonel Eads became Captain Eads, then Mr. Eads. “Before the troubles were over, the ‘Colonel’ had fallen to ‘Jim Eads’ and to tell the truth, long before the work was out of the shops, ‘Jim’ was now and then preceded with a big ‘D’.”
* It was about this same time, during construction of the Big Bend Tunnel, in West Virginia, that a Negro railroad worker named John Henry drove just such steel drills faster, it was said, than any man, for which he would be immortalized in what has been called America’s greatest ballad. Henry supposedly met his death competing with a steam drill about 1870. No such steam drills were used in the bridge caissons.
* Copeland, unlike O’Rourke, had not been acting alone, but was a spy for Sheriff Jimmy O’Brien, a political enemy of Tweed’s, who got Copeland a job in Connolly’s office and intended to use the material to blackmail Tweed. Tweed offered O’Brien $20,000 to keep him quiet and promised more. O’Brien, who wanted $350,000, took the money, then took Copeland’s “research” to the Times.
* Claflin was Tennessee Claflin—sometimes spelled Tennie C.—Mrs. Woodhull’s younger sister and the consort to old Commodore Vanderbilt.
* Harris thought the caisson was made of iron. He describes the work chambers as small, when in fact they were quite large, and his figures for the wages paid, the hours kept, the time spent in the lock, etc., do not jibe with the records.