The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

by David McCullough

  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 about 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?

  The trouble was, mainly, that everyone was getting extremely anxious to see the work completed, and to know exactly, once and for all, just how much the whole thing was going to cost.

  As of the start of the new year, 1882, total expenditures on the bridge would come to $13,377,055.67. But as several editorial writers noted habitually, the original estimate had been for about half that, and although Henry Murphy said he thought another $600,000 should be enough to finish with, even he was unwilling to be held to that figure. The old memory of Tweed’s courthouse was returning to haunt honest men on the board, the cost of the bridge now being up to what had been spent on the courthouse.

  In addition, only a small minority of the trustees understood very much about the engineering of the bridge, or its history, and fewer still had ever had any personal dealings with the Chief Engineer. In fact, more than half the men now charged with managing the great enterprise had never even seen Washington Roebling. And there was no way to communicate with him except in writing, which few wanted to do, which was a nuisance for those who did, and which occasionally led to misunderstandings.

  Robert Roosevelt, the most outspoken of them, asserted foolishly at the trustees’ meeting of October 13 that the added weight of the extra steel would weaken the bridge. Exactly how much more weight could the cables carry, he demanded to know. He wanted Roebling to present a complete report promptly. His motion had carried and Roebling had done as directed, explaining in a letter dated January 9, 1882, why the added weight meant added stiffness in the deck and so even greater strength, not less. Roebling did not say who had directed him to revise his plans, he said only that it had become “incumbent” upon him to do so. He had been against the idea of conventional trains on the bridge, as they knew, but he had gone along with it. “When I consented to make this change,” he said, “it was not so much owing to personal solicitation as to the reflection ‘of what benefit had it been to erect this bridge at a vast expense unless we use it for every possible purpose to which the structure will lend itself.’” They were now to have a bridge so rigid that ordinary traffic would have no visible effect on it. And to settle the nerves of anyone concerned about the cables, he concluded by stating rather dramatically that the cables were strong enough to uproot the anchorages.

  The original plan for a cable-drawn bridge train had not been abandoned. It was just that the bridge would now have enough added strength to accommodate the future, which, it was quite naturally presumed, would involve some sort of railroad. The presumption was mistaken; but for different reasons nobody could have guessed at then—the advent of the internal combustion engine and the automobile, mainly—the decision would turn out to be the right one. As a result, the bridge would remain in service for another fifty years before any major alterations in the superstructure became necessary.

  It was an extremely important and fortunate decision, in other words, and from some things said later Stranahan appears to be the one who made it, with Kingsley, Murphy, and, ultimately, Roebling backing him up. Perhaps Stranahan had reached an “understanding” with old Commodore Vanderbilt, who was dead by this time, and the New York Central was still serious about the idea. Perhaps Stranahan and the others simply figured the decision was in the best long-range interest of Brooklyn, that a bridge could not be too strong after all, and rather than risk a noisy fight over the thing—a fight they might very well lose—they just went ahead and did it.

  The decision was made in Brooklyn, that much is certain, and whatever the explanation, they were pressing their luck. Delivery of steel already on order was way behind schedule; any additional steel would mean further delays, as well as greater cost. So the immediate result of the announced change in plans was a clamor to find out who was mismanaging things in this the final stage of the work.

  Ironically, the bridge was all but built. Certainly the difficult and demanding work was done with. It was largely a matter of finishing things up now—the final masonry on the approaches, the last of the trusswork, the plank flooring for the roadways and promenade, and a lot of painting. Already the men had begun taking down the footbridge.

  For the first time since his father’s death in the summer of 1869, Roebling could relax a little. For the first time in thirteen years his services were no longer vital. For the first time he was not really needed any longer.

  Like Roebling, those trustees who had been in on the work since the beginning were all thirteen years older. A few, like Henry Murphy, were showing their age. But now, with the completion of the work at last almost within reach, it was the newcomers on the board who were the most impatient and the most frustrated by delays. As before, Robert Roosevelt made the greatest noise, claiming with some justification that nobody ever gave him a straight answer to his questions. But he also had an important new ally, the very young new Republican mayor of Brooklyn, Seth Low.

  Seth Low said hardly anything at the first trustees’ meeting he attended in January 1882. He simply sat and listened, an alert, serious expression on his boyish face. Only toward the end did he inquire of Henry Murphy when the bridge would be finished.

  Murphy answered the question as directly as it had been asked. The bridge would be finished in the fall, he said, providing there were no further complications about money.

  At age thirty-two, Seth Low was young enough to be Henry Murphy’s grandson, but still not quite so young as Murphy had been when he was elected mayor of Brooklyn. Low was the son of A. A. Low, the wealthy silk merchant, whose clipper ships had once lined the Brooklyn wharves, and he had grown up with “all the advantages,” in the Low mansion down the street from the Roebling house on Columbia Heights. Perhaps Henry Murphy saw something of himself in the young man. Without question he understood the background Low came from.

  Like Murphy, Low had done extremely well at Columbia College. President Barnard had called him “the first scholar in college and the most manly young fellow we have had here in many a year.” Since then he had taken his place in the silk business, married the daughter of a United States Supreme Court Justice, and organized a Young Republican Club in Brooklyn to help elect Garfield and Arthur. As political clubs went, it was quite a departure, there being no smoking or billiard rooms, no bar, no social occasions, nothing but hard work.

  When Seth Low ran for mayor it was as “the people’s candidate” and the overriding issue had been home rule for Brooklyn. His well-scrubbed, well-brushed good looks and “tender” age had been in his favor. Politicians did not much care for him, but the people responded in no uncertain terms. He roundly trounced Boss McLaughlin’s candidate, winning with a majority of four thousand votes, and without using his own money. Out-of-state papers were already calling him a figure of national importance and there was talk he would be governor before long.

  But by spring the completion of the bridge looked no nearer, Murphy’s assurances were no longer good enough, and Low had joined forces with A. C. Barnes and the New York contingent—Mayor Grace, Roosevelt, and the Comptroller of New York, a man named Campbell—“to clean the stables,” as the papers put it. The young men were all in a very great hurry now and the papers and the public seemed very pleased with that.

  Low made his first move on June 12. He asked that the Chief Engineer be required to submit a regular monthly report on the work accomplished and that he include an opinion on when the bridge would be completed. Then a motion was made that the Chief Engineer be requested to appear in person before the trustees at a special meeting two weeks hence, “to consult on matters appertaining to the bridge.”

  But later that very day Robert Roosevelt had thrown up his hands and in a great pique announced his resignation. If his purpose, in part, was to draw attention to the mounting animosity within the board, he succeeded. The problem with the bridge was lack of leadership, Roosevelt declared in a long open letter to William Grace. A conscientious
trustee could never get straight answers on anything. The management of the bridge, he said, was in the grip of a solid phalanx that “even death itself could not break in upon.” The delays in steel delivery were scandalous and left little doubt that things never would have come to such a pass had there been a full-time Chief Engineer on duty, not just to supervise the work but to meet with the trustees whenever they needed explicit information.

  The papers made much of what Roosevelt had to say. Henry Murphy immediately called in the reporters to present the other side of the story. If Roosevelt felt in the dark on bridge matters, the elderly lawyer said, it might be because he had attended less than half the meetings there had been in the time since he became a trustee. Nor had he ever once taken his technical questions to the assistant engineers, who were always available for just that purpose. As for Roebling, his place could not be filled by any twenty engineers.

  Another trustee who was with Murphy at the time, John T. Agnew, interrupted to make the point that Roebling’s mind was as clear as ever. From his window Roebling could see everything going on at the bridge, Agnew said. Why, with a glass he was even able to distinguish the faces of the different men at work. “His plans and diagrams are all about him, and nothing is done in the work until it has first been submitted to him. He cannot walk about the streets as you and I can, but he moves about his room, and on some days can go out. He has promised to be present at a future meeting of the Board.”

  Roebling had made no such promise. It was true he had improved somewhat. His eyesight, in particular, was much improved. He could write again, in a dreadful, childish scrawl that was just barely legible, but he could do it. And by this time he had gone out of doors once or twice. But irrespective of its accuracy, Agnew’s statement put a very different light on things.