The Great Bridge

The Great Bridge is a non-fiction book published in 1972 by the American author and popular historian David McCullough. It tells the story of John A. Roebling and his son Washington, detailing the struggles they endured in building the iconic Brooklyn Bridge. In 1973, The Great Bridge won the New York Diamond Jubilee Award along with a Certificate of Merit from the Municipal Art Society of New York.

Born in Prussia in 1806, John Augustus Roebling had an interest in engineering from an early age. His parents fostered this interest by hiring him a prestigious tutor in mathematics and science. By the age of fifteen, John had already passed the surveyor's exam and was enrolled in college where he studied architecture and engineering. While learning about hydraulics and bridge suspension from the country's top engineers, John also attended philosophy lectures given by the legendary German philosopher Hegel.

Upon graduating, John learned that there were very few opportunities for engineers in Prussia. Still reeling from the Napoleon Wars, the country had little resources or desire to invest in infrastructure, leaving bright young engineers like John with little recourse in their home country. And so John--along with his brother Carl and a "technological utopist" named Johann Adolphus Etzler--emigrated to America where they eventually settled in Pennsylvania outside Pittsburgh. There, they established a German community known as Saxonburg which was designed based on their shared utopian dreams. Unfortunately, those dreams didn't exactly pan out as arguments between Etzler and the Roeblings threatened their shared vision, but the town still exists today.



John got his start producing wire rope, a cheaper and more durable alternative to the hemp ropes currently used by railways to transport cargo over mountains and bodies of waters. With his foot in the door as an engineer, John won a number of contracts to build various aqueducts and suspension bridges across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky in the years prior to winning the Brooklyn Bridge contract. He conceived of the project as early as 1852, but due in large part to delays caused by the Civil War, preliminary work on the bridge wouldn't begin until 1867.

By 1869, John was still mired in the design and surveying stage of construction. One day in June of that year, John's foot was pinned between a ferry and a piling. After an operation that resulted in the amputation of his toes, John contracted a tetanus infection. Aside from the dubious-sounding "water therapy," John refused further treatment. He was dead within days.

That left John's 32-year-old son, Washington, in charge of the project. Later in life, Washington would write:



"After a week I had become sufficiently composed to take a sober look at my own situation. Here I was at the age of 32 suddenly put in charge of the most stupendous engineering structure of the age! The prop on which I had hitherto leaned had fallen -- henceforth I must rely on myself -- How much better when this happens early in life, before we realize what it all implies."

The initial construction work involved building the two massive towers planted at the bottom of the East River. Rather than diving to the bottom of the river and building up, engineers started with giant floating boxes known as caissons, then built more and more weight on top of them as they naturally sank to the bottom of the riverbed. Once they reached the bottom of the rivers, workers would have to dive down to dig out the sediment in order to ensure that the caissons were properly fixed at a predetermined death. At this time in history, nobody was aware of the existence of decompression sickness, better known as "the bends." In fact, on-site doctors referred to the condition as "caisson disease" as they had never before observed it. Symptoms of the bends can range from temporary joint pain and headaches to embolisms, paralysis, and even death.

It was this very "caisson disease" that caused Washington to suffer major permanent paralysis in early 1870, just days after the tower caissons broke ground at the riverbed. As a result, Washington was forced to supervise the rest of the bridge's construction from the window of his nearby apartment. Acting as liaison between Washington and his team on-site was his wife, Emily Warren Roebling. An experienced mathematician and engineer herself, Emily was able to effectively communicate the finer details of the bridge's construction between Washington and his crew, serving as an indispensable supervisor over the next eleven years of the bridge's construction.



While the Brooklyn Bridge is one of the most famous and recognizable American architectural achievements, few know the physical and mental turmoil its construction caused to the engineer who designed it, and his family.