Brooklyn Bridge

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Brooklyn Bridge

The master piece of
construction

Brooklyn Bridge

Abstract
The project of the Brooklyn Bridge was started in 1883, when a
German immigrate architecture took the approve from New York
governor to build a bridge that would link between the East River
both sides, and in result it would help in many transportations for
people and goods. The project consumed many materials as well as
souls, because Roebling, the engineer, along with his wife, and his
elder son, were all died after handling the project. The Brooklyn
Bridge had many names, the first of them was New York Bridge,
the second was the East River Bridge, but the last confirmed name
that took place in 1915 was the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn
Bridge is considered to be the first longest bridge all over the world
as it length estimated with 1,595.5 ft, and as well the fist standing
bridge with the use of metal wires. Many workers had died during
the processes of construction as they estimated to be more than 600
individual. In its very fist opening, the first one who took the
advantage of walking on it, was Emily Roebling, the wife of late
Roebling's son. The opening witnessed more than 15,000 person
walked on the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge gained its
popularity by considering it one of the most influence national
projects in the United States.

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Brooklyn Bridge

Table of Contents

Content

Page

Introduction

3

Historical Overview

3

Construction Steps

10

Conclusion

15

References

16

Table of Figures

Figure

Page

Figure 1. View of Walk side of Brooklyn Bridge.

4

Figure 2. The highest construction cross the East
River.

6

Figure 3. Brooklyn as Light Source

7

Figure 4. Basic Construction Notes

8

Figure 5. Location in New York

9

Figure 6. The Hanging Wires 1

10

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Brooklyn Bridge

1. Introduction
The bridge of Brooklyn which located in the city of New
York is considered to be one of the oldest construction projects of
bridges all over the United States of America. The construction
works started in the year of 1883 in the purpose of connecting
between the two areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn over the East
River. The main length of spanning was estimated with 1,595.5
feet (486.3). Such length made Brooklyn Bridge to be considered
to be the longest bridge all the world. Its opening took place in the
year 1903, and with the amount of its steel wiring construction, it
was considered to be the first bridge to be hold with wiring spins of
metal.

Figure 1. View of Walk side of Brooklyn Bridge

2. Historical Overview
The first name of the bridge was the New York bridge, due
to its massive construction that made the city special because of.
Another named called on it as East River bridge because it was
built on the river the crosses between the east and west of New
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Brooklyn Bridge

York. The official name of the bridge was settle down to be The
Brooklyn Bridge by the city government in 1915. The Brooklyn
Bridge became the most significant view in the city of New York
such its first opening, and the construction itself gained different
awards, such as the National Historic Landmark in the year 1964,
and the National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in the year
1972 (Chan, 2007).

The first design of the Brooklyn Bridge was handled with a
German person who was architecture immigrated from Germany
and he named as John Augustus Roebling. Roebling designed
before Brooklyn bridge a set of bridges such as Roebling's
Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania bridge, as well
as Waco bridge in Texas, and finally the bridge of the John A.
Roebling in Cincinnati, Ohio state.

Roebling got injured during performing the necessary
surveys for the project, as he was standing in front of ferry stand,
and it got rushed against a pile, and he got his toes crushed. The
injury of his toes developed afterward and turned into tetanus
infections, the matter that affect on his debility and resulted in his
death. Roebling died but he left his project in charge and care of
both his wife and son Washington Roebling (Chan, 2007).

Bridge of Brooklyn consumed during its construction
massive amounts of metal and devices needed to be used in its
executive. The young engineer Washington Roebling took the
responsibility of executing the bridge after his late father.
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Brooklyn Bridge

Figure 2. The highest construction cross the East River.
As his father, Washington Roebling suffered as well an
injury that cost him to get paralyzed, because of the sickness of
decompression right in the beginning of executing the construction
on January 3, 1890. Washington Roebling was infected with the
"Caission Disease", which was first diagnosed by Andrew Smith
who was the doctor that supervised on the health of all workers on
the project of Brooklyn Bridge. The "Caission Disease" infected
many other workers who were handling work within the caissions.
After his disease, the son Washington Roebling left paralyzed and
in a dangerous debilitating condition, and he was no more able on
supervising on the constructions works. Luckily, his wife Emily
Warren Roebling, who was a house wife and never been to work
before, took the lead on making the connection between her
husband's guidance and the other engineers on site. Emily was
forced to study higher mathematics under the supervision of her
paralyzed husband, along with the calculations of catenary curves,
the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies
of cable construction.
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Brooklyn Bridge

The following years of constructing the Brooklyn Bridge
which consumed more than 11 years, Emily spent them in helping
her husband in the process of distance supervision on the
constructions of the Brooklyn Bridge (Sexton,1994).

Figure 3. Brooklyn as Light Source
When iron probes underneath the caisson found the bedrock
to be even deeper than expected, Roebling halted construction due
to the increased risk of decompression sickness. He later deemed
the aggregate overlying the bedrock 30 feet (9 m) below it to be
firm enough to support the tower base, and construction continued
Harbor pilot Joseph Henderson was called upon as an expert
seaman to determine the height of the water span of the Brooklyn
Bridge (James and Sydney,1975).

The towers are built of sandstone, granite, and using of the
cement Rosendale. The stonework chunks were excavation and
formed on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the
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Brooklyn Bridge

Bodwell Granite Company, and delivered from Maine to New
York by schooner (Feuerstein, 1998).

The Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on May 24, 1883.
The opening ceremony was attended by several thousand people
and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion.
President Chester A. Arthur and New York 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 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 (Chan, 2007).

Figure 4. Basic Construction Notes

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Brooklyn 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 $15.5 million to
build and an estimated number of 27 people died
died during its
construction (Feuerstein
Feuerstein, 1998).

Figure 5.
5 Location in New York

On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a rumor that
the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which was
responsible for at least twelve people being
being crushed and killed. On
May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the
bridge's stability—while
stability
publicizing his famous
amous circus—when
circus
one
of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants
over the Brooklyn Bridge (Feuerstein, 1998).

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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 silver, although it has been
argued that the original paint was red (James and Sydney,1975).

Figure 6. The Hanging Wires
At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge
building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind
tunnels until the 1950s, well after the collapse of the original
Tacoma Narrows Bridge 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

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Brooklyn Bridge

of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into
history and been replaced (Prince, 2005).

3. Construction Steps
After the collapse in 2007 of the I-35W highway bridge in
the city of Minneapolis, increased public attention has been
brought to bear on the condition of bridges across the US, and it
has been reported that the Brooklyn Bridge approach ramps
received a rating of "poor" at its last inspection. According to a
NYC Department of Transportation spokesman, "The poor rating it
received does not mean it is unsafe. Poor means there are some
components that have to be rehabilitated." A $508 million project
to replace the approaches began in 2010 and is scheduled to run
until 2014. As part of this project, two approach ramps will be
widened from one lane to two, and clearance over the Brooklyn
(James and Sydney,1975).

The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in the
1978 book The Great Bridge by David McCullough and Brooklyn
Bridge (1981), the first PBS documentary film ever made 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 (Prince, 2005).

It has six lanes for motor vehicles, with a separate walkway
along the centerline for pedestrians and bicycles. Due to the
roadway's height (11 ft (3.4 m) posted) and weight (6,000 lb (2,700
kg) posted) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are
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Brooklyn Bridge

prohibited from using this bridge. The two inside traffic lanes once
carried elevated trains of the BMT from Brooklyn points to a
terminal at Park Row via Sands Street. Streetcars ran on what are
now the two center lanes until the elevated lines stopped using the
bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center tracks. In
1950 the streetcars also stopped running, and the bridge was rebuilt
to carry six lanes of automobile traffic (James and Sydney,1975).

In Manhattan, motor cars can enter from either direction of
the FDR Drive, Park Row, Chambers/Centre Streets, and
Pearl/Frankfort Streets. Pedestrian access to the bridge from the
Brooklyn side is from either Tillary/Adams Streets, or a staircase
on Prospect St. between Cadman Plaza East and West. In
Manhattan, the pedestrian walkway is accessible from the end of
Centre Street, or through the unpaid south staircase of Brooklyn
Bridge-City Hall IRT subway station (Prince, 2005).

While the bridge has always permitted the passage of
pedestrians across its span, its role in allowing thousands to cross
takes on a special importance in times of difficulty when usual
means of crossing the East River have become unavailable (Chan,
2007).

Following the 1965, 1977 and 2003 blackouts and most
famously after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center, the bridge was used by people leaving Manhattan after
subway service was suspended. The massive numbers of people on
the bridge could not have been anticipated by the original designer,
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Brooklyn Bridge

yet John Roebling designed it with three separate systems
managing even unanticipated structural stresses. The bridge has a
suspension system, a diagonal stay system, and a stiffening truss.
"Roebling himself famously said if anything happens to one of
systems (Feuerstein, 1998).

The association of large statistics of people on a viaduct
creates walker oscillations or swing as the throng lifts one walk
after another, some falling inevitably in coordinated cadences. The
natural sway motion of people walking causes small sideways
oscillations in a bridge, which in turn cause citizens on the bridge
to sway in step, growing the amplitude of the bridge oscillations
and repeatedly reinforcing the consequence. High- thickness
interchange of this environmentally causes a bridge to appear to
move erratically or "to wobble" as happened at aperture of the
London Millennium walkway in 2000. The manufacture of the
Brooklyn Bridge started in 1869 and took 14 years to complete. At
the time many saw the construction of such a large viaduct as a
folly (James and Sydney,1975).

The Brooklyn Bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway open to
walkers and cyclists, in the center of the bridge and higher than the
automobile lanes. More than 4,000 pedestrians and 3,100 cyclists
cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day

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Brooklyn Bridge

4. Conclusion
The Brooklyn Bridge was the most significant modern
construction in the 20th century. It took the period of less than 20
years to be accomplished. The first idea was assigned to the well
known engineer of building bridges who was working before for
the Prussian government as a builder for both bridges and roads.
Roebling was the first one who mentioned the idea of building a
bridge that connect the both sides of the East River, although luck
was not with him in the day he decided to take a ferry in order to
start his surveys measurements, because the ferry got crushed into
the ice and he got badly injured and afterword died. Both of
Roebling's wife, and son took charges after him, as his wife as her
late husband got sick and died before to have the chance to witness
her husband's mater piece. The son took in charge after his late
parents and started the construction, and when he got sick, his own
wife consumed the supervision by his guidance. The family of
Roebling during their mission building the Brooklyn Bridge had
proven on maximum standards of obligation, responsibility and
honest.

The story of building the Brooklyn Bridge is rather sad,
because not only the Roebling family who have many deaths in its
members, as many members who worked on the site, as the final
calculations assumed that more than 600 workers lost their lives
during constructions works. The opening of the Bridge didn’t come
near so that the last Roebling engineer can witness, but in its first
opening in May, 1883, more than 150,000 individual crossed the
Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge has a very important usage
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Brooklyn Bridge

in the lives of people who inhabit New York city, as it saves more
than approximately ten hours to go around the whole different two
banks of the East River, as well as saving time, and money, it is
used to be only for walk bridge in a sermonic campaign of the
government of New York city.

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Brooklyn Bridge

5. References
Chan, Sewell (2007). "Brooklyn Bridge Is One of 3 With Poor
Rating". The New York Times. Retrieved September 10, 2007.

E.P.D. (1867). "Bridging the East River – Another Project". The
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. p. 2. Archived from the original on October
19, 2007. Retrieved November 26, 2007.

Feuerstein, Gary (1998). "Brooklyn Bridge Facts, History and
Information". Archived from the original on February 8, 2010.
Retrieved May 23, 201.

B., James Armstrong and S., Sydney Bradford (1975). "The
Brooklyn Bridge". National Register of Historic Places InventoryNomination. National Park Service.

Prince, April Jones (2005). "Twenty-One Elephants and Still
Standing". Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-44887-X.

Sexton, Joe (1994). "4 Hasidic Youths Hurt in Brooklyn Bridge
Shooting". The New York Times. Retrieved June 30, 2010.

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