A full page from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper went into the scrapbook, a close-up view of workmen out on one of the cables attaching iron suspender bands and to these the wire rope suspenders that would hold the steel floor beams of the roadway. The cables by this time had been thoroughly wrapped from end to end. Once the suspenders were in place, the men could start laying up the crossbeams of the deck, beginning with those closest to the anchorages and towers and working out. The nearest suspenders had only to be pulled back, the beam attached and swung out into place. Planks would be put down over the beam then for the men to stand on as they launched the next beam, and so on out over the water. Once the steel deck began to take form, she would be able to walk out on it herself to look things over as her husband directed.
In April she cut out two articles about St. Ann’s Church, which eleven years before Roebling and Paine had used to sight the center line. The historic old building was about to be demolished—to be “swept away by the march of modern improvement,” said the Eagle.
Her scrapbook tells the full story of the bridge that year as the public saw it. There was the usual wrangling over finances, a minor accident or two, a great deal of complaining and explaining about the steel contract (the Edge Moor Iron Company was maddeningly slow on delivery), periodic reports on the progress of the work (about the building of a big skew arch over William and North William Streets in New York, for example, and the steady advance of the bridge deck). One tiny item, a clipping not much bigger than a postage stamp, reports that J. Lloyd Haigh of Brooklyn was breaking rocks at Sing Sing. He had been convicted of passing bad checks.
In June Henry Murphy said it would be all right for two Plymouth Church musicians to take their coronets out to the center cradle on the bridge, and there “to the delight of hundreds of upturned faces from the ferryboats and the Fall River boat Newport,” they played “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” “Rock of Ages,” and “Old Hundred.”
Summer and fall were uneventful on the whole except for one incredible scene that took place at a trustees’ meeting in October, and which had all Brooklyn talking.
The meeting, involving only routine matters, had been about to adjourn when Comptroller Steinmetz announced that he had a communication for the president, whereupon he handed Henry Murphy an unusually lengthy printed document and a messenger burst into the room and distributed additional copies to everyone present. Willam Kingsley slowly got to his feet, unfolded his copy, and moved to have it tabled.
“It is an insult to the dignity of the board that this man should present any communication in this way,” he said.
“Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman,” exclaimed Steinmetz excitedly in broken English. “I demand my communication shall be read.” Kingsley said he had the floor and Steinmetz was out of order.
“Ever since this individual has been a member of this board,” Kingsley said, “he has never suggested a single practical or intelligent idea, but has continually been bringing before the board such claptrap stuff as has just been presented.”
“But the communication has not yet been read,” protested Steinmetz.
Kingsley, “glaring at the Comptroller,” exclaimed, “You must realize, sir, that you are not in the slums of politics.”
The motion to table the document was then quickly carried, while Steinmetz kept protesting. “I represent the citizens of Brooklyn,” he shouted. “I would not be here if I was a private citizen…. Mr. Kingsley’s suggestions have always been heard and accepted, while mine have not.”
“This is all buncombe,” Kingsley snapped back, shaking Steinmetz’ printed letter. “It’s ward politics brought into the board.”
Murphy promptly shut off any further discussion of the subject and took up another matter. But when the meeting adjourned, Kingsley marched over to Steinmetz, who was standing among some of the others in an adjoining office.
“You are acting the part of a demagogue,” Kingsley said to Steinmetz, who was nearly a head shorter. “What or whom do you represent?”
“Mr. Kingsley’s manner was determined,” according to one man in the group, “and as he stood facing Mr. Steinmetz, he looked steadily at him. The latter turned pale, and the other members of the board crowded into the room.”
“I represent the people of Brooklyn,” Steinmetz answered.
“You represent nobody,” said Kingsley.
“You are no gentleman,” said Steinmetz.
“You are a blackguard,” responded Kingsley.
“I am Comptroller and I represent the citizens of Brooklyn.”
“I say you represent nobody—nobody at all.”
“Well, Mr. Kingsley,” said Steinmetz backing off, “I can afford to take that from you.”
“Of course you will,” said Kingsley.
Steinmetz then turned his back on Kingsley and left the room, but Kingsley followed after, “continuing to express his indignation.”
The story was all over town by nightfall. Steinmetz said later that Kingsley had threatened to strike him, but nobody else who had been in the room agreed with that. But neither could any of the trustees justify Kingsley’s behavior, and the papers made a point of the fact that Steinmetz was a cripple. Even Kingsley’s own Eagle allowed it would have been better had the Steinmetz letter been read. As it was, the whole thing had taken on much more importance than it deserved. Every afternoon paper carried the Steinmetz letter in full and there was hardly enough in it to have attracted any but passing interest under normal circumstances. Steinmetz made a number of wild accusations—about the steel contract chiefly—none of which could be supported, and although a few editorial writers took them at face value and made some foolish charges as a result, the whole issue blew over in a matter of days.
Nonetheless, the confrontation in the board room was indicative of the strong feelings developing between various personalities on the board, and half a lifetime later, when Roebling would be asked what part his wife had played in building the bridge, it would be “her remarkable talent as a peacemaker” among these gentlemen and during these particular years that he would praise highest, telling people with customary deadpan understatement how she had a way of “obviating personal friction with her tact” and could smooth over difficulties that were “naturally inherent in a work somewhat political in its conduct.”
Apparently just about everyone involved with the work liked her enormously and held her in great respect, regardless of his politics, profession, age, or particular feelings about her husband. That she was welcome among them, her opinions regarded seriously, was considerable testimony in itself, in a day and age when a woman’s presence in or about a construction job except as a spectator on special occasions was absolutely unheard of.
How many ruffled feathers she smoothed, how many times she sat patiently listening first to one side of an argument, then another, how many tactful words of caution she offered a Henry Murphy or a Ferdinand Roebling or a C. C. Martin before they entered her husband’s sickroom, how frequently she herself dealt directly with a Steinmetz or a Kingsley, is not indicated in the record. But the impression is that she was very busy indeed at just such tasks. Roebling would describe her role as “invaluable.”
In February Henry Murphy, James Stranahan, and the Reverend Dr. Storrs put on formal attire and went over to New York with Martin, Collingwood, and three younger Rennselaer graduates recently hired as assistants to attend a gathering of the alumni of the famous Polytechnic Institute. Collingwood was to be the main speaker of the evening and his subject was the bridge. Murphy and Stranahan had been invited as representatives of the Bridge Company, and Storrs, it seems, was becoming something of a fixture at such occasions, a sort of unofficial chaplain to the somber-looking technical men who talked so matter-of-factly of improving on God’s handiwork and who, since the war, had already changed the look of the country more than any army ever had.
A great deal was said during the course of the evening about what had been accomplished by
the 739 engineers the Institute had sent into the world in its fifty-five years, about the countless dams, canals, bridges, railroads, and water works they had built. The strongest testimony of all, however, according to a Professor Greene from Troy, was to say simply that the East River bridge was the work of RPI men—which was not altogether the case but which pleased the professor’s audience no end.
Collingwood spoke a little too long about the staggering quantities of brick, stone, steel, and iron that had gone into the bridge and then announced to great applause that the work was nearly done. The real hero, he said, was Roebling, who had never lost his hold on the bridge. “The men who have come from the Institute to the bridge had come to stay,” he said, “they seem to have a wonderful sticking power.”
There was much conversation about the Chief Engineer during the dinner that followed, almost as much apparently as there was about his wife, who by this time had become an idolized figure among the assistant engineers. *
In the spring the steel floor beams started going up and the great structure began to look like a bridge. By summer, even with the contractor behind on deliveries, the superstructure had advanced well over the river, coming from both directions. After studying the work from a boat out on the river, one admiring engineer told reporters that the way the bridge was being built it would be as immovable as an enormous crowbar and would last a thousand years. That was the summer Garfield was shot and Chester A. Arthur, who had been collector of customs for the Port of New York back in the early years of the bridge, became President of the United States.
The dome on the Custom House was one of those New York landmarks Washington Roebling could pick out quite easily from his second-floor window. His vista on the world was the same as it had been since the summer of 1877, when he returned to the house on the Heights. It was the only way he had seen the city or the bridge in four years.
From the Battery to the New York tower, all the best-known landmarks stood out like points along a ruler. The steeple on old Trinity Church was the highest point downtown. Then over to the right, farther uptown, was the tower on the Western Union Building, which was almost on a line with the New York landing of the Fulton Ferry and with his own house. Then came the Post Office, with its flags and heavy mansard roofs, the shot tower built thirty years before by James Bogardus, pioneer in the use of cast iron. Just to the right of that, before the bridge tower, was the Tribune Building, with its long spike of a clock tower. With his field glasses or telescope, it was possible to read the time on the Tribune clock.
There were any number of things to read through the telescope, written large in different colors on the sides of New York buildings—THE EVENING POST…ABENDROTH BROTHERS, PLUMBERS IRON ENAMELED WARE…HOME FOR NEWSBOYS…Roebling had seen the skyline steadily changing year by year, reaching a little higher always. Still the granite towers remained in full command. Trinity Church and the Tribune tower were actually taller, in measured feet and inches, but they did not look it, being farther in the distance, and by comparison they were mere needles against the sky.
From Roebling’s window both of the bridge towers stood out plainly. Indeed, very nearly the entire structure could be seen, silhouetted against that segment of sky that seemed to dome Harlem and Blackwell’s Island. It would be said that his telescope was so powerful he could examine the very rivets being put into the superstructure, which was nonsense. But the bridge was certainly close enough for him to see a great deal of what was going on. Interestingly, his wife would remark later that he actually spent little time peering through his telescope. One glance of his “practiced eye,” she said, was enough to tell him if things were being handled properly. His troubles with his vision, it seems, were confined to things close up.
In the fall C. C. Martin was saying the bridge would be finished by the next summer. By the time the first snow was flying, steel beams and suspenders had been strung all the way from tower to tower, and in early December Emily had her own first moment of triumph in a very long time. Presumably, from his window, the Chief Engineer watched the entire ceremony.
She had left the house in the early afternoon and was driven directly to the foot of the Brooklyn tower, where, accompanied by Farrington, she climbed the spiral staircase as far as the roadway. A gentle wind was blowing as she waited. The air was as mild as April nearly, with a smell of rain.
Presently a delegation of trustees arrived in the yard below, climbed the stairs, and were next tipping their silk hats, shaking her hand, commenting on the abnormal weather, and saying nothing of the meeting they had come from. It had been, she knew, one of the most crucial sessions since the bridge began. But neither she nor they made any mention of it.
Then they had set off, strolling along on the plank walk that had been put down on the steel superstructure, a plank walk no more than five feet wide that now stretched the whole way over the river. The sensation was apparently only a little less nerve-racking than on the footbridge.
She walked out in front, leading the way, escorted by Mayor Howell of Brooklyn and the new mayor of New York, William R. Grace, the wealthy steamship owner. The others, about a dozen in all counting the assistant engineers and two or three reporters, followed behind. The views were exclaimed over. A strong wind was blowing and one reporter noted how it played with the long white locks on the head of the venerable James S. T. Stranahan. Sea gulls were everywhere, gliding past cables and stays in big arcs, swooping beneath the bridge, tiny flashes of white far down below against the deep gray-green of the water. Boats passed beneath, white sails close-hauled. The water swirled and turned with great turbulence, from the wind, from the boats plowing through in both directions, from the churning tide. There was much animated conversation within the little procession. Everyone was having a fine time on this first crossing of the bridge by the actual roadway.
On their arrival at the New York tower several bottles of champagne were uncorked and the trustees drank to the health of Mrs. Roebling and “to the success of things in general.”
22
The Man in the Window
The best way to secure rapid and effective work is to get a new Chief Engineer.
—New York Star
NOBODY would say who made the decision and that greatly aggravated the gentlemen from New York, and the mayor in particular. There was no possible way, they said, by which their city could benefit from Pullman cars and freight trains crossing the bridge and they wanted to know by whose authority the engineer’s plans had been suddenly and secretly changed to accommodate such traffic. But none of the other trustees would give a direct answer. There was mounting tension in the board room, whereupon James Stranahan, addressing himself to William R. Grace, said, “There has been authority for everything that has been done…No personal considerations and no personal feelings have entered into the matter in any way, and I say distinctly there has been nothing done on which a charge can be made that it was invested with secrecy or in any way outside the legitimate duty of the members of the board.”
Stranahan, obviously angry, was resorting to a defense he seldom used. His customary method was to assume his opponent was perhaps half right, well intentioned beyond question, but still, on the whole, altogether mistaken in the premises from which he started. He was always willing to rely upon “the more mature judgment” of his opponent, and to give him opportunity for maturing his judgment, he was generally willing to accept a delay. But there was no easy way to delay the direct question and so the usually amiable Stranahan, who reminded people of an English statesman and who was looking more dignified than ever now that he was in his seventies, had been filled with great righteous indignation, basing his case, as it were, on the excellence of his personal character and past services.
The tactic worked. Mayor Grace said he meant no harm and asked no further questions. Stranahan said there was really no reason for the gentlemen from New York to be apprehensive. He told them how ten years earlier he had talked with Cornelius Vanderbilt ab
out linking up with the New York Central and how Colonel Roebling had met with Vanderbilt’s engineer to figure a way to handle the problem. It was thought that a sunken line could be run from Grand Central Depot south to the bridge, then the trains could be raised by hydraulic lifts to cross over the bridge. After all, Stranahan asked, was it so unnatural for Brooklyn to want a depot of her own? Consider what is happening all around, he said. “Already there are three trunk lines to the West terminating in Jersey, and more lines will be completed in twelve months. In New York the only trunk line going west is the New York Central. New Jersey sends Annex boats for passengers, and floats carry the freight past your shores, and of what benefit is that to you gentlemen of New York? Sooner or later, gentlemen, you will consider this matter, and when that time comes I trust you will see that we have not labored in vain, either for our own benefit or that of the City of New York.”
And then it had been remembered that Mrs. Roebling was up on the Brooklyn tower by this time, waiting to make the walk over the bridge, and the meeting had adjourned, the question still hanging.
As things turned out, there never would be an official answer. Those responsible for the decision preferred to remain anonymous, and so the one person left to account for the change was Roebling.
Had it not been so near the end of the work, had there been less talk in the papers about the ever-mounting cost of the bridge, the change would probably not have mattered a great deal. But in October of 1881 when Roebling submitted his request for an additional one thousand tons of steel to put into the trusses to make the floor rigid enough to carry heavy locomotives and cars, several individuals saw it as the moment they had been waiting for.
Why the sudden concern about the strength of the bridge, they wanted to know. Who decided on railroad trains? How was such an immensely important decision arrived at and why was there no explanation of this in the record? And always, between the lines, was the larger question: Did the Chief Engineer know what he was doing?
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 129