I have been reading with interest (but not without some difficulty) “The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge,” by David McCullough. “The Great Bridge” is mostly social history, which is what keeps me going and it fairly vividly portrays a time in American history following the Civil War when heroic capitalism and can-do industrial and technical know-how took off. It was a period of enormous expansion of America’s infrastructure—roads, bridges, dams, buildings and cities—and there was a sense of a continental nation, having endured its Constitutional trauma in war, now prepared to seize on its enormous potential. It was really the period when America ceased to be the agrarian nation it had been up to the Civil War, and began the process of becoming an economic colossus. It was also a period of extraordinary corruption.
I say mostly social history, because the story of the Bridge is also, invariably, an engineering story. A fair amount of text is given over to descriptions of the remarkably intricate feats of architecture, engineering and construction required in putting a suspension bridge over the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan. If you are like me and do not easily or naturally envision mechanical and spatial images, these passages can be a bit of a trudge. For the most part though it is enough to have a general feel for the purpose that is being pursued in any given passage to get by.
On reflection I would say that the difficulty of following some of these descriptions is itself instructive. Those of us who live and function in the realm of words and ideas may please ourselves with the notion that words and ideas are what make the world go round. But the world goes around more reliably because of people who build the things that make the world accessible and convenient. Civilizations need bridges and the people who build them, need minds that can conceive of how to sink two massive caissons (or chests, from the French) the size of football fields into opposite ends of a river to serve as foundations for stone towers, then sling steel cables from tower-to-tower and from the cables attach wires that will suspend the bridge.
“The Great Bridge” is largely the story one such inspired mind, that of Washington Roebling. Actually, it was Washington’s father John, who originally conceived the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and was in charge of its initiation. But John was to be a casualty of work on the Bridge (he would not be the only one) and died after a freak accident early on. I have to say that this was fortuitous for the telling of McCullough’s tale, because John Roebling, though he may have been brilliant, was a somewhat weird character with a touch of the sinister about him (he appeared to have abused at least some of his children). His son Washington stepped into the breach. A veteran of several Civil War battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Washington was a soldier’s soldier. He had a cast iron work ethic, and an attention to detail that was unflinching. Much of the first half of the book is devoted to the sinking of the caissons in the river to serve as the foundations for the two great towers facing each other ; picture two massive chests constructed of steel and timber, each the size of football fields and open at the bottom like an enormous breadbox lid. These were dropped into the river, open side down, and filled with compressed air; then workmen were lowered by means of pneumatic tubes into the caissons where they dug out the riverbed, while up above stones were piled onto the caissons to sink it into the riverbed until it rested on bedrock. Roebling himself spent much time in the caissons (at one point a fire broke out in the Brooklyn caisson and Roebling was on hand to fight it) and from these excursions suffered several bouts of the Bends (or Caissons disease, the proper name for the disorder arising from the formation of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream when an individual emerges too quickly from decompression). A great many workmen in the caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge fell victim to the Bends (a few of them died) and great advances in understanding the disorder, and how to prevent it, were made because of the Brooklyn Bridge experience. Roebling’s bouts with the disorder (as well as nervous exhaustion) caused him to have to take a leave, but he returned to direct the construction of the bridge from his sickbed miles away in Trenton, New Jersey.
On reflection I would say that the difficulty of following some of these descriptions is itself instructive. Those of us who live and function in the realm of words and ideas may please ourselves with the notion that words and ideas are what make the world go round. But the world goes around more reliably because of people who build the things that make the world accessible and convenient. Civilizations need bridges and the people who build them, need minds that can conceive of how to sink two massive caissons (or chests, from the French) the size of football fields into opposite ends of a river to serve as foundations for stone towers, then sling steel cables from tower-to-tower and from the cables attach wires that will suspend the bridge.
“The Great Bridge” is largely the story one such inspired mind, that of Washington Roebling. Actually, it was Washington’s father John, who originally conceived the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and was in charge of its initiation. But John was to be a casualty of work on the Bridge (he would not be the only one) and died after a freak accident early on. I have to say that this was fortuitous for the telling of McCullough’s tale, because John Roebling, though he may have been brilliant, was a somewhat weird character with a touch of the sinister about him (he appeared to have abused at least some of his children). His son Washington stepped into the breach. A veteran of several Civil War battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Washington was a soldier’s soldier. He had a cast iron work ethic, and an attention to detail that was unflinching. Much of the first half of the book is devoted to the sinking of the caissons in the river to serve as the foundations for the two great towers facing each other ; picture two massive chests constructed of steel and timber, each the size of football fields and open at the bottom like an enormous breadbox lid. These were dropped into the river, open side down, and filled with compressed air; then workmen were lowered by means of pneumatic tubes into the caissons where they dug out the riverbed, while up above stones were piled onto the caissons to sink it into the riverbed until it rested on bedrock. Roebling himself spent much time in the caissons (at one point a fire broke out in the Brooklyn caisson and Roebling was on hand to fight it) and from these excursions suffered several bouts of the Bends (or Caissons disease, the proper name for the disorder arising from the formation of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream when an individual emerges too quickly from decompression). A great many workmen in the caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge fell victim to the Bends (a few of them died) and great advances in understanding the disorder, and how to prevent it, were made because of the Brooklyn Bridge experience. Roebling’s bouts with the disorder (as well as nervous exhaustion) caused him to have to take a leave, but he returned to direct the construction of the bridge from his sickbed miles away in Trenton, New Jersey.
The end result, of course, is a technical but also an aesthetic marvel, and it is worth the read to realize that the mind that managed this feat was no less inspired than the mind that conceived the Declaration of Independence.
McCulllough quotes Lewis Mumford, in the 1920s, as saying that the Bridge proved that industrialism need not be synonymous with ugliness. "All that the age had just cause for pride in--its advances in science, its skill in handling iron, its personal heroism in the face of dangerous industrial processses, its willingness to attempt the untried and the impossible--came to a head in Brooklyn Bridge."
McCulllough quotes Lewis Mumford, in the 1920s, as saying that the Bridge proved that industrialism need not be synonymous with ugliness. "All that the age had just cause for pride in--its advances in science, its skill in handling iron, its personal heroism in the face of dangerous industrial processses, its willingness to attempt the untried and the impossible--came to a head in Brooklyn Bridge."
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