On this date in 1870, construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge.
New York City legislators agreed to hire John Roebling, a noted designer of suspension bridges, to span the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Bridge became the world’s first steel suspension bridge and, at the time, it was also the longest, spanning 1,600 feet between its towers.
Workers — usually immigrants paid about $2 a day — dug out the foundation beds at the bottom of the river with the help of caissons: airtight wooden boxes that were lowered to the river bottom, trapping the air inside them. The workers, called “sandhogs,” would then dig down to the bedrock, sometimes through as much as 78 feet of mud and boulders. The caissons would then be moved to the next section, and the process would begin anew. The caissons and the airlocks that transported the workers down to the job site were hot and uncomfortable, and the air pressure was very high; workers were usually brought up too quickly, and suffered from “caisson disease” or “the bends”: joint pain, paralysis, convulsions, and even death. The master mechanic described the experience: “Inside the caisson everything wore an unreal, weird appearance. There was a confused sensation in the head, like ‘the rush of many waters.’ The pulse was at first accelerated, then sometimes fell below the normal rate. The voice sounded faint [and] unnatural, and it became a great effort to speak. What with the flaming lights, the deep shadows, the confusing noise of hammers, drills and chains, the half-naked forms flitting about, if of a poetic temperament, [you] get a realizing sense of Dante’s inferno. One thing to me was noticeable — time passed quickly in the caisson.”
The bridge opened in 1883, and for several years afterward, it was the tallest structure in the western hemisphere. It cost more than $15 million and at least 20 lives, but it’s an enduring New York City landmark.
