The Great Bridge (77 page)

“The size and magnitude of this work far surpass any expectations”: WAR to Charles Swan, March 16, 1865, RUL; also in Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
p. 234.

“Leave bridgebuilding to younger folks”: JAR to Charles Swan, April 1865, RUL; also quoted in Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
p. 114.

“You drive over to Suspension Bridge”: Quoted in Gies, Bridges
and Men,
p. 188.

Niagara Bridge: Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
pp. 118—124; Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
pp. 157-193; Stuart,
Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America;
Kirby and Laurson,
The Early Tears of Modern Civil Engineering,
pp. 155—156. There is also a superb scale model of the bridge on display in the Museum of History and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution.

Maid of the Mist
shoots the rapids: The best description is in Anthony Trollope’s
North America.

Early suspension bridges: Of the numerous histories of bridges the most readable and reliable is
Bridges and Men
by Joseph Gies. See also
Bridges and Their Builders
by David B. Steinman and Sara Ruth Watson.

Charles Ellet: Stuart’s biographical sketch in
Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America,
pp. 257-285, miscellaneous newspaper clippings, RPI.

Roebling aspires to be Ellet’s assistant: Letter quoted in Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
pp. 54—55.

Homer Walsh: Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
p. 163.

Ellet drew up cannon: WAR to F. M. Colby of Dodd, Mead & Co., February 1907. RUL.

“Before entering upon any important work”: Stuart,
Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America,
p. 325.

“The only real difficulty of the task”: JAR,
Report on the Niagara Bridge,
Buffalo, 1852. RUL.

JAR not the innovator of stiff roadway, anchor stays, or the first to spin cables in place: Steinman mistakenly credits Roebling with all three, either directly or by implication, in
The Builders of the Bridge,
pp. 81, 172.

“In the anxiety to obtain a light roadway”: ASCE,
Transactions,
1868-71, a paper by Edward P. North, March 4, 1868, which contains one of the very best accounts of the evolution of the suspension bridge and its refinements.

JAR’s disdain for English bridgebuilders: JAR letter quoted by Stuart,
Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America,
pp. 306-308.

Eyewitness account of Wheeling Bridge failure: Wheeling
Intelligencer,
May 18, 1854; also quoted in Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
p. 171.

“…there are no safer bridges”: Steinman and Watson,
Bridges and Their Builders,
p. 209.

JAR’s explanation of the Wheeling failure: Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
pp. 182-183.

Ellet rebuilt the bridge himself: Research by C. M. Lewis, S.J., of Wheeling College, West Virginia, reported in ASCE,
Civil Engineering,
September 1969.

“My bridge is the admiration of everybody”; “We had a tremendous gale”; “No one is afraid to cross”: JAR to Charles Swan. RUL.

Slocum toast:
Eagle,
July 26, 1869.

“…the great achievements of the present”: Whitman,
Passage to India.

“one of the victories of peace”:
Harper’s Weekly,
May 29, 1869.

“The chief engineers became his heroes”: Sullivan,
The Autobiography of an Idea,
pp. 247—249.

4 Father and Son

“Nothing lasts forever”: WAR to JAR II, March 6, 1894. RUL.

Job applicants and JAR’s comments: JAR’s address book, 1869. RUL.

WAR’s notes and diagrams for the center line: Black leather notebook kept by WAR, 1869. RPI.

“Your Turkish Bath tickets came today”: WAR to JAR, May 21, 1869. RUL.

Meetings with Rawlins: Described by WAR in several letters to JAR, June 1869. RUL.

Consultants’ approval published:
Report of the Board of Consulting Engineers to the Directors of the New York Bridge Company.

Revisions in design as a result of War Department directive: WAR.

“Introductory Remarks,”
Pneumatic Tower Foundations of the East River Suspension Bridge.
LER.

“This bridge is to be built”:
The New York Times,
July 23, 1869.

“He felt at his age he could ill afford to lose any time”: WAR in an “Introduction” to JAR’s
Long and Short Span Railway Bridges.

This description of the accident is drawn largely from an account in the
Eagle,
July 22, 1869.

“There is no such thing as chance”: Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
p. 320.

Death of JAR: Various items in the
Eagle
in the days that followed; later remarks made by WAR (RUL and RPI); Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
pp. 139—140; description of tetanus in
The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy.

Instructions to Ed Riedel: Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
p. 140.

“He who loses his life from injuries”:
Eagle,
July 22, 1869.

“The name of John A. Roebling”: EWR to JAR, January 6, 1868. RUL.

Gifts for Elvira: From purchases listed in JAR’s Private Cash Account, 1867-69. RPI.

Wedding gifts for the second Mrs. JAR:
Ibid.

Contents of will: JAR will dated September 14, 1867, RUL; also covered in some detail in Schuyler,
The Roeblings,
pp. 145-146.

Funeral: Both the
Eagle
and the Trenton
Daily State Gazette
for July 26, 1869, carried long descriptive accounts.

“With its inspiration gone”: Steinman and Watson,
Bridges and Their Builders,
p. 236; Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
p. 323.

“Not long since, before the accident”:
Eagle,
July 22, 1869.

“First—I was the only living man”: WAR to James Rusling, January 23, 1916. RUL.

“…At the time of his death he was already arranging”: WAR to William Couper, July 26, 1907. RUL.

“The great boast of this land…jabbering and wrangling politicians”:
Eagle,
July 27, 1869.

5 Brooklyn

“transformed…from insignificance”:
The City of Brooklyn,
a guidebook.

Third-largest city: Syrett,
The City of Brooklyn, 1865-1898,
p. 12.

Types of manufacturing:
Ibid.,
pp. 14—15.

“an enigma to the respectable”:
Ibid.,
p. 29.

East River shipyards and virtues as a harbor: Albion,
The Rise of New York Port (1815-1860).

More ships than New York and Hoboken combined: Syrett,
The City of Brooklyn,
p. 139.

Salt air “pure and bracing…”: Stiles,
A History of the City of Brooklyn,
Vol. II, p. 504.

“the most majestic views of land and ocean”: Attributed to James S. T. Stranahan in
The City of Brooklyn.

Banquet on board
City of Brooklyn: Eagle,
April 15, 1869.

Hezekiah Pierrepont and the development of Brooklyn Heights: Stiles,
A History of the City of Brooklyn.

“Almost everybody appears to have built his house”:
Eagle,
June 22, 1872.

“elegant equipages, well-dressed grooms”:
Old Brooklyn Heights,
pp. 33-34.

“His knowledge of fish”:
National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

Henry Ward Beecher: Smith,
Sunshine and Shadow in New York,
pp. 86-100; McCabe,
Lights and Shadows of New York Life,
pp. 655-657; Rourke,
Trumpets of Jubilee;
a long profile in the
Eagle,
March 10, 1869.

“He went marching up and down the stage”: Kaplan,
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain,
pp. 23—24.

“Our institutions live in him”:
Eagle,
March 10, 1869.

“A more intelligent body”: From the Springfield (Mass.)
Republican,
quoted in the
Eagle,
January 1872.

Charles Dickens on Brooklyn: Quoted in Still,
Mirror for Gotham,
p. 204.

Brooklyn slums: According to
The New York Times,
June 30, 1866, “dirt and filth and poverty reign triumphant…Here homeless and vagabond children, ragged and dirty, wander about…decaying garbage, dead animals, filth and unclean privies, with crowds of unwashed human beings [are] packed together…”

The Kingsley-McCue-Murphy meeting is reported in the Eagle, May 24, 1883; also in Steinman,
The Builders of the Bridge,
pp. 302-303.

General Johnson’s opposition to a bridge: Long Island
Star,
February 13, 1834; Trachtenberg,
Brooklyn Bridge; Fact and Symbol,
pp. 35-36.

HCM’s Mansion House speech: A commemorative booklet on the farewell dinner, LIH; also quoted in the
Eagle,
December 2, 1882.

William C. Kingsley: Obituaries in
The New York Times,
New York
World,
and
Eagle,
February 21, 1885; in memoriam booklet,
W. C. Kingsley,
LIH; Green,
A Complete History of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge from its Conception in 1866 to its Completion in 1883; Stiles, The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn,
Vol I, pp. 463—464;
Eagle History of Brooklyn, Eagle,
May 24, 1883; scrapbooks in LIH collection; Syrett,
The City of Brooklyn,
pp. 74-76.

Henry C. Murphy: Obituaries in
The New York Times,
New York
World,
and
Eagle,
December 2, 1882; scrapbooks in LIH collection; Green,
A Complete History of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge;
Stiles,
The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn,
Vol. I, pp. 360—366;
Eagle,
May 24, 1883; Stiles,
A History of the City of Brooklyn,
Vol. II, pp. 266-270.