Before Brooklyn exceeded it in cool, Manhattanites spoke dismissively of BNTs. These were the Bridge ‘n’ Tunnel folk, the out-of-towners who needed civil engineering to help them reach social nirvana. The ambitious critic Norman Podhoretz, a master of self-invention, was one such. His notorious Making It (1967) begins: ‘One of the longest journeys in the world is… from Brooklyn to Manhattan.’
But since 1883 the journey over the East River has only been 5,989 feet, although physical distance was not the measure that pained Podhoretz. That’s the total length of Washington Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge, the first connection between the outer boroughs and the elite ‘New York’. It was, and remains, both symbol and structure of huge dimensions: long-span bridge-building was, in the late 19th century, a bravura expression of US expertise.
It is actually quite difficult to make an ugly bridge — think of Freyssinet, Eiffel, Brunel, Telford — although during Britain’s motorway-building era, the old Ministry of Works did its damnedest. A bridge is always a fine demonstration of form and function, but there is poetry too. Bridges connect places once separate, creating hitherto unseen vistas. Their conception requires a mixture of boldness and caution. Like all the best design, a good bridge contributes to both commerce and culture.
There have been other books about the Brooklyn Bridge, notably David McCullough’s The Great Bridge (1982), but Erica Wagner’s is rather a biography, almost a psychological biography, of its designer. Washington Roebling was the son of John, a German immigrant of exacting, even exigent, character who initiated what was originally the East River Bridge. When the older man died of tetanus following the amputation of his toes after a freakish site accident, Roebling junior took over, aged only 32.
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