Great book, incredibly researched, well written, easy to follow. Important part of history.

This is by far the most frustrating piece of history that I have ever read about. Possibly because it's not about royalty (I'm used to the politics and backstabbing of royal courts), but still, I was so infuriated and angry at the hustling for power and money in this book that I read two other books while reading this on in order to take a break from it.
And all the people who seemed to know more about bridge making than the engineer? (reading this in 2021 and given the amount of people who seem to know more about Covid than doctors may be another reason I found this book so frustrating).

For anyone not familiar with the great struggles involved in these terrific public works projects, this is a real eye-opener. This book is very THOROUGH. I was amazed by 3 things:

1. The brilliant engineering ingenuity and hard-fought struggle to implement.

2. The totally horrible corruption surrounding politics of that day. Makes me feel like our day is not necessarily the worst.

3. How totally captivated the general public was by the spectacle of its construction. Nowadays things are being built and we don't pay much attention.

The author does a very fine job of relating many of the correspondences and legal proceedings which add great depth to understanding what is involved to convince people to try something very innovative.

Non Fiction>US History
I read this as a Buddy Read, the discussion is with the Non Fiction Book Club here on GR.

I had not planned to read this as the topic didn't really interest me. It's always great to read with others, though, so I joined in. I was going to actually read it but the audio was available at the library first and I had an 8 hour drive for a weekend trip, so I decided to start reading with the audiobook. I started to play it and was really impressed with the narrator and thought he sounded like an actor I tally like. I ended up looking into it further and realized that Edward Herrmann was indeed the narrator (in the original edition CD). I decided to stick with the audio. Additionally, I wanted to participate in the discussion and felt there was more than enough detail and the newer edition audio is 27 hours whereas the original is 10. So... original Herrmann version it was! I read along once I got the newer edition text and it was verbatim where I checked so idk what was consolidated or removed.


Lots of detail about all the men (and a wife) involved in the Brooklyn Bridge...too much for me but I guess at least it's all documented for those who want that much detail.
For the sheer length of the book I expected more about the technicalities of building the bridge. There was some and it is more detailed than what I already knew but I wish the bridge and not the people were the focus.

What was most enjoyable for me was putting this all in context...NYC transforming into what it will become, the peri industrial revolution building concepts, the beginning of steel, barely a generation removed from the Gold Rush and Civil War... just tying NYC and the Northeast into some recent reads about the Gold Rush, Little Big Horn, and The Reconstruction.

America's tallest office buildings weren't as tall as this bridge at the time.

General Custer and Roebling were the same age.

This was the first and last large stone bridge in North America and it will likely outlast the steel ones that were built since.



My favorite quote...
"To say that this occurrence was an accident would certainly be wrong, because not one accident in a hundred deserves the name. In this case it was simply the legitimate result of carelessness, brought about by an overconfidence in supposing matters would take care of themselves.”

I love McCullough's work- from Truman to John Adams, to Mornings on Horseback, and many more- I have read and given everyone 5 stars. This book is well written, thoroughly researched, and has some very interesting information in it. That said, it seemed that I could have built the bridge in a shorter time than it took to slog through all the detail in this book. I am certain that there are many detail oriented, engineer types who would appreciate it all but I am not one of them. Too much detail about every bit of material that went into the bridge, every step and correction that needed to be made and information about other people unrelated to the bridge that had no place in the book in my opinion.

I got a little bogged down in the engineering and politics, but on the whole it held my interest. I would like to read a similar book about San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. David McCullough is one of the very best authors of all times to me. I'm not great at history, but he has a way of telling a story that penetrates into my heart and brain and soul such that I actually learn something. Then I get excited and start researching and reading more and more about whatever topic grabbed me. This time being the Brooklyn Bridge. Very interesting and a great way to learn about it. I'm including some very interesting information I learned in my studies.

The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge in New York City and is one of the oldest roadway bridges in the United States. Started in 1869 and completed fourteen years later in 1883, it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, spanning the East River. It has a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m) and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge constructed. It was originally called the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and the East River Bridge, but it was later dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name coming from an earlier January 25, 1867, letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since opening, it has become an icon of New York City and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972

DESIGN: Although the Brooklyn Bridge is technically a suspension bridge, it uses a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge design. The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. The limestone was quarried at the Clark Quarry in Essex County, New York. The granite blocks were quarried and shaped on Vinal haven Island, Maine, under a contract with the Bodwell Granite Company, and delivered from Maine to New York by schooner.

The bridge was built with numerous passageways and compartments in its anchorages. New York City rented out the large vaults under the bridge's Manhattan anchorage in order to fund the bridge. Opened in 1876, the vaults were used to store wine, as they were always at 60 °F (16 °C). This was called the "Blue Grotto" because of a shrine to the Virgin Mary next to an opening at the entrance. When New York magazine visited one of the cellars in 1978, it discovered on the wall a "fading inscription" reading: "Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long."

CONSTRUCTION: The bridge was conceived by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling in 1852, who spent part of the next 15 years working to sell the idea. He had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky. While conducting surveys for the bridge project, Roebling sustained a crush injury to his foot when a ferry pinned it against a piling. After amputation of his crushed toes, he developed a tetanus infection that left him incapacitated and soon resulted in his death in 1869, not long after he had placed his 32-year-old son, Washington Roebling, in charge of the project.
In February 1867, the New York State Senate passed a bill that allowed the construction of a suspension bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Two months later, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Company was incorporated. The company was tasked with constructing what was then known as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge.

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began in 1869. The bridge's two towers were built by floating two caissons, giant upside-down boxes made of southern yellow pine, in the span of the East River, and then beginning to build the stone towers on top of them until they sank to the bottom of the river. Compressed air was pumped into the caissons, and workers entered the space to dig the sediment, until the caissons sank to the bedrock. The whole weight of the bridge still sits upon 15-foot-thick southern yellow-pine wood under the sediment.

Many workers became sick with the bends during this work. This condition was unknown at the time and was first called "caisson disease" by the project physician, Andrew Smith. Washington Roebling suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of "caisson disease" shortly after ground was broken for the Brooklyn tower foundation on January 3, 1870. Roebling's debilitating condition left him unable to physically supervise the construction firsthand.

As chief engineer, Roebling supervised the entire project from his apartment with a view of the work, designing and redesigning caissons and other equipment. He was aided by his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, who provided the critical written link between her husband and the engineers on site. Warren Roebling studied higher mathematics, calculations of catenary curves, strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and intricacies of cable construction. She spent the next 11 years helping to supervise the bridge's construction.
When iron probes underneath the caisson for the Manhattan tower found the bedrock to be even deeper than expected, Roebling halted construction due to the increased risk of decompression sickness. He later deemed the sandy subsoil overlying the bedrock 30 feet (9.1 m) below it to be firm enough to support the tower base, and construction continued.

The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in The Great Bridge (1972), the book by David McCullough, and in Brooklyn Bridge (1981), the first PBS documentary film by Ken Burns. Burns drew heavily on McCullough's book for the film and used him as narrator. It is also described in Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, a BBC docudrama series with an accompanying book.

OPENING: The New York and Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on May 24, 1883. Thousands of people attended the opening ceremony, and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester A. Arthur and Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower. Arthur shook hands with Washington Roebling at the latter's home, after the ceremony. Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and in fact rarely visited the site again), but held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display. Since the New York and Brooklyn Bridge was the only one across the East River at that time, it was also called East River Bridge.

On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost US$15.5 million in 1883 dollars (about US$393,964,000 in today's dollars) to build, and an estimated 27 men died during its construction.

On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a woman falling down the stairway caused a stampede, which was responsible for at least twelve people being crushed and killed. On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.
At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world—50% longer than any previously built—and it has become a treasured landmark. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. The paint scheme of the bridge is "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver", although it has been argued that the original paint was "Rawlins Red".

At the time the bridge was built, engineers had not discovered the aerodynamics of bridge construction. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s, well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, known as Galloping Gertie, 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 or 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. 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.

LATER YEARS: In 1915, the city government officially named the structure the "Brooklyn Bridge", a name first mentioned in print in a January 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
During the Cold War, a fallout shelter was constructed beneath the Manhattan approach. The abandoned space in one of the masonry arches still contained the emergency survival supplies for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union when rediscovered in 2006 during a routine inspection.
In 1964, the bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark, having become an icon of New York City since its opening, and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972.
The centennial celebrations on May 24, 1983, saw a cavalcade of cars crossing the bridge, led by President Ronald Reagan. A flotilla of ships visited the harbor, parades were held, and in the evening the sky over the bridge was illuminated by Grucci Fireworks The Brooklyn Museum exhibited a selection of the original drawings made for the bridge's construction, some by Washington Roebling. Media coverage of the centennial was declared "the public relations triumph of 1983" by Inc.

Beginning on May 22, 2008, five days of festivities celebrated the 125th anniversary of the bridge's opening. The events kicked off with a live performance of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park, followed by special lighting of the bridge's towers and a fireworks display. Other events held during the 125th anniversary celebrations, which coincided with the Memorial Day weekend, included a film series, historical walking tours, information tents, a series of lectures and readings, a bicycle tour of Brooklyn, a miniature golf course featuring Brooklyn icons, and other musical and dance performances. Just before the anniversary celebrations, artist Paul St George installed the Telectroscope, a video link between New York City and London, on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. The installation lasted for a few weeks and permitted viewers in New York City to see people looking into a matching telectroscope near London's Tower Bridge. A newly renovated pedestrian connection to the DUMBO neighborhood was also unveiled before the anniversary celebrations.

RENOVATION: After the 2007 collapse of the I-35W highway bridge in Minneapolis, public attention focused on the condition of bridges across the U.S. The New York Times reported that the Brooklyn Bridge approach ramps received a rating of "poor" during its inspection in 2007. According to a NYC Department of Transportation spokesman, the poor rating did not indicate a dangerous state but rather implied it required renovation. A US$508 million project (equivalent to US$570 million in 2017) to renovate the approaches began in 2010, with the full bridge renovation beginning in early 2011 which was originally scheduled to run until 2014, however the project did not finish until April 2015.

Work included widening two approach ramps from one to two lanes by re-striping a new prefabricated ramp; raising clearance over the eastbound Interstate 278 at York Street, on the double-deck Brooklyn-Queens Expressway; seismic retrofitting; replacement of rusted railings and safety barriers; and road deck resurfacing. The nature of the work necessitated detours for four years.

In August 2016, after the renovation of the bridge had already been completed, the New York City Department of Transportation announced that it would conduct a seven-month, US $370,000 study to verify if the bridge could support a heavier upper deck that consisted of an expanded bicycle and pedestrian path. As of 2016, about 10,000 pedestrians and 3,500 bikers use the pathway on an average weekday. Work on the pedestrian entrance on the Brooklyn side was underway by 2017.
Great Book - HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

Masterfully told, McCullough’s “The Great Bridge” tells the complicated, more than decade long story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and in the process, imbues a structure now dwarfed by the NYC skyline with the awe and sense of appreciation it was first greeted with. As always, McCullough’s use of private correspondence and characterizations manage to make distant figures tangible, recreating the personality conflicts at the heart of the Bridge’s construction. McCullough chose his subject, showing how a Bridge built at the height of the Gilded Age overcame political corruption (e.g., the Tweed Ring), worker deaths, and more thanks to the character and sense of service of Washington Roebling, his wife Emily, and his engineers, as well as the hard, dangerous work carried out by innumerable workers (immigrants and non-immigrants alike).

Incredible story of the resilience and dedication to a cause by Washington and Emily Roebling. Against all odds, a bridge was built - symbolic in so many ways of human achievement, unity amidst division, and the connection of two cities to become one.

n  … on a day when two young men were walking on the moon, a very old woman on Long Island would tell reporters that the public excitement over the feat was not so much compared to what she had seen “on the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge.”n

On the inside cover of my copy of this book its previous owner has inserted a little love note. The brief message is written in a very neat script, in red ink, apparently on the eve of a long separation. Now, you may think that a book about the Brooklyn Bridge is a rather odd gift for a lover—and, considering that the book ended up in a used book shop, this may be what the recipient thought, too—but, now that I have read McCullough’s chronicle of the Brooklyn Bridge, I can see why it might inspire such sentimental attachment. For it is a thoroughly lovable book.
tt
This is my first McCullough work, and I am pleased. He is a fine writer. His prose is stylish yet unobtrusive, striking that delicate balance between being intelligible but not simplified. He has a keen eye for the exciting details of a seemingly dry story; and effectively brings together many different threads—the personalities, the politics, the technology—in such a way that the past looms up effortlessly in the imagination. The only parts which I think could have been improved were his explanations of the engineering, since he used too many unfamiliar terms without explaining them, perhaps thinking that such explanations might swell the book to unseemly proportions. In any case, he is a writer, not an engineer, and he shines most when discussing the human experience of the Bridge.

The bridge’s designer was John A. Roebling, who deserves a book unto himself. An eccentric polymath, who among other things studied philosophy under Hegel, he came to America to found a Utopian village and ended up the foremost expert on suspension bridges. The Brooklyn Bridge was his project; but tragically he died during the first year of the project, after his foot was crushed, his toes amputated, and he contracted tetanus. His son, Washington, immediately took over—in many ways just as remarkable a man. A Civil War hero with a tenacious memory, the bridge ruined his health, too, through a combination of stress and the bends.
tt
In those days the bends were known as “caisson sickness,” named for the compartment sunk underwater in order to excavate for the bridge’s foundations. These were filled with pressurized air in order to prevent water from seeping in. Unfortunately, back then the dangers of rapidly depressurizing were not understood, so many people fell ill during the construction—including Roebling himself, who spent the final years of the bridge’s construction as an invalid, observing the work through a telescope from his apartment. Luckily for him, his wife, Emily, was a remarkable woman—diplomatic and brilliant—and helped to carry the project to completion.

These personalities come alive in McCullough’s narration, turning what could have been a dry chronicle into an enthralling book. And this is not to mention the political corruption, the manufacturing fraud, the deadly accidents, and the glorious celebrations that took place during the fourteen years of the bridge’s construction.

Yesterday I revisited the Brooklyn Bridge, which is beautiful even if you know nothing about it. As a friend and I strolled across in the intense summer heat, elbowing our way through crowds of tourists, I blathered on about all the fun facts I had learned from this book—which I am sure my friend very much appreciated. Sensing his discomfort, I made sure to emphasize that a fraudulent wire manufacturer had tricked the engineers into using sub-par cables, and that a panic broke out a week after the bridge’s opening, which resulted in twelve people being trampled. You see this book has already helped my social life. Maybe next I can write my own love note inside.

Top on my agenda for my next trip to New York City:
1. Dinner at the Red Rooster in Harlem: I read Yes, Chef! and my mouth is watering for the opportunity to dine at Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurant.
2. Brooklyn Bridge: I plan to spend a significant amount of time walking, gazing, inspecting and admiring. I will also peer down at the East River and think about the caissons down there, and what it took to lay those foundations. I will think about the men who toiled day in and day out in horrid conditions for years. I will look at each bolt, nut and screw of the Brooklyn Bridge, and appreciate all the engineering that went on behind the scenes. I will study the wires and contemplate all that I learned about them from the 100 or so pages devoted to cables and wires of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I have seen the Brooklyn Bridge from afar, but it took David McCullough’s The Great Bridge to bring to me to appreciation of what a majestic accomplishment it is.

The daunting prospect of reading an over-600 page book about building a bridge might have overwhelmed me if not for my determination to read every single book of 2014. Parts of the book were tedious in technical detail, and went way over my head, but below is a website that helps a reader visualize all that went into laying the foundations using caissons as well as the all-important anchorages.

http://history1800s.about.com/od/brid...

The Great Bridge was quite an education of a specific part of American history. In the late 1800’s, America was still a young country, and despite the long and horrible Civil War, Americans still had strong ambition to do great things. The indefatigable Roeblings were the essence of the unmatched spirit that only a land of opportunity can create. This collective high energy level and drive to succeed served America well especially with the upcoming major events of the not-too-distant future: World War I, Great Depression and World War II.

Please bear with my notes on The Great Bridge. It was over 600 pages long after all!

1. For one of CWR’s book reports, I read Who Was Harry Houdini? It referred to the popularity of spiritualism in the late 19th century. Readers may find it curious that an engineer as brilliant as John Roebling would be taken in with spirits and participate in seances to communicate with the afterlife. However, you need to take the time period into context; this was the heyday of spiritualism. Many people were dabbling in seances, even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes. Harry Houdini made efforts to expose the farce of seances, and John Roebling never had the opportunity to be enlightened by the famous magician.

2. “You want these children to be building your bridges.” Years ago, when I worked as an assistant preschool teacher, I heard that over and over during a lecture given by an expert on preschool education on accommodating teaching styles to certain learning styles. While I resent the implication that preschool aged children are pegged from that point on having the acumen, temperament and intellect to be building bridges, I recognize that it takes a certain personality blessed with talents to undertake the important feat of building bridges that hundreds, thousands and millions of people cross daily with their lives depending on it.

3. There was bound to be plenty of politics surrounding the Brooklyn Bridge, and David McCullough devotes many pages to this complicated subject including the Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring. One line regarding the elections of 1876 struck me with humor. Newspapers and picture magazines described it as probably the most important election ever. That election came and went, and here we are in 2014 with people saying the exact same thing about the upcoming mid-term Elections in November. With Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring involved, the powers-that-be of the Brooklyn Bridge had to get their hands dirty. I have admiration for both father and son Roebling for having the foresight not to buy stock in the Brooklyn Bridge, and for making a conscious effort to stay above the political fray with their integrity intact.

4. With 21st century knowledge, it was sad to read about all the suffering of men who worked in the caissons. Roebling did everything he could to help matters; he shortened the shifts for the men, and hired a doctor to be on site to treat the men afflicted with what we know now as the bends. Despite the efforts, it was not surprising to read that a group of caisson workers went on strike, demanding higher pay; $3 for a four hour day. The Bridge Company agreed to $2.75 a day, but the men demanded more. Negotiations dragged on for another three days. But then William Kingsley announced that if the men did not all go back to work immediately he would fire every last one of them and with that the strike ended. That reminded me of when Ronald Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers in the early 1980s. It seems that labor unions have so much political power today, that it would be impossible for a William Kingsley or a Ronald Reagan to take such a bold step.

5. The period of time at the end of the sinking of the New York caisson was,” his wife would say, “one of the intense anxiety for Colonel Roebling.” That is probably an understatement.
That same day, May 18, 1972, with the caisson at a depth of seventy-eight feet six inches, Roebling ordered that the digging stop. He had decided not to go to bedrock, staking his reputation and career on the decision. The New York tower would rest on sand. It is interesting to ponder over whether he would have made the same decision today now that measures can be taken to ensure workers’ safety. The sand and gravel on which the New York side of the bridge rests upon is “solid a footing as rock itself.” That anxiety over that decision combined with the horrible physical suffering he endured from his own severe case of the bends rendered Roebling an invalid for much of his life. He was ultimately vindicated for this decision in the mid 20th century when a team of engineers inspected the Brooklyn Bridge with a fine tooth comb, and decided all it needed was a new coat of paint.

6. Throughout the book, David McCullough quoted Roebling several times, and it wasn’t long before I started highlighting these profound quotes: (Kindles...gotta love ‘em)

Regarding a frivolous lawsuit with a rival engineer named Eads, Roebling wrote “Its perusal has left only the one prominent impression on my mind, that his skill in blowing his own trumpet is only surpassed by his art in writing abusive and unjust articles about other people.”

Regarding income tax which became a reality in 1913: “It means 100,000 spies to snoop into everybody’s business and affairs.”

“It is the unscrupulous press that makes most of the trouble.”

“I am not a politician and I have never tried to conceal the contempt I have always felt for men who devoted their lives to politics,”

7. It is a testimony to Roebling himself that his extremely capable wife and assistants were devoted to him with all their hearts and souls. Washington Roebling was wise to surround himself with good people with good values and high standards. The following quote from Emily Roebling says it all:

Each man had a certain department in charge and they worked with all their energies to have the work properly done according to Colonel Roebling’s plans and wishes and not to carry out any pet theories of their own or for their own self glorification.”

The same could be said for Emily Roebling herself. David McCullough wrote a thorough biography of John Adams, and it was clear that Adams’ wife, Abigail, was vital to her husband with her support and encouragement. Emily Roebling, whose brilliance matched her husband’s, was essential to the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

8. It tickled me that Washington Roebling also had a night blooming cereus, and enjoyed its magnificent bloom. My night blooming cereus, given to me by a dear friend, has brought me much delight as well. Roebling describes his night blooming cereus “a night-blooming cereus stalk has been knocked about in the greenhouse. Last night it suddenly bloomed, was brought to my bedside at 10 p.m. A delicate odor filled the room - a wonderful flower-much larger than a rose. A calyx filled with snow white petals curved outward and oval pointed. This morning it is gone - to sleep the sleep of ages again.”

9. My grandfather used to lovingly tease me that he owned a share of the Brooklyn Bridge that he would bequeath to me. I played along good naturedly. If anyone deserves a share of the Brooklyn Bridge, it would be David McCullough who accomplished a remarkable feat of his own, the meticulous recording of the building to the Brooklyn Bridge to preserve its engineering wonder for future generations.

Epic story indeed! After reading this meticulously researched work, I will never look at my beloved Brooklyn Bridge in the same old way. Did you know that its towers are both the first and last stone gateways ever built on the North American continent? I learned that and so much more, plus much I didn’t need to, about the Roeblings and how the bridge came to be. McCullough dispelled myth and misinformation that still exists some 130 years later. Foremost that John Roebling only designed the bridge; his son Washington actually built it. Also, Washington did not die from the bends before it was finished. He outlived almost everyone and died peacefully at the age of 89.

I glossed over a few sections because it was easy to get bogged down in the minutiae: paragraphs dedicated to whether the promenade planks should be 5x5 or 5x6 inches or the long list of every person who gave a speech on opening day, for example. Add an extra star if you’re an engineer or NYC history buff (what I learned about Boss Tweed was fascinating). In that case you might also care to read the 80 pages of notes at the end. I didn’t, but there is a great statistics summary and timeline. Overall, an inspiring and satisfying read.

This was pretty long winded in my opinion but was worth the read. He made a lot of history come to life through the story of the Brooklyn Bridge and lives of the Roeblings (the Industrial Revolution, the corruption and fraud of the Gilded Age, caissons disease, the history of New York in general). Washington Roebling was extremely dedicated to the work in spite of his health and his wife’s dedication to supporting him in his work was amazing too.