Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge captures the complexities of late-19th-century architecture in a single sweep. At that time, eclecticism, industrialization, technology, and urbanization drove the production of new building types maximizing the use of new materials produced through manufacturing. Embodying the dichotomy between engineering and architecture, the Brooklyn Bridge is at once beautiful and sweeping and immensely powerful, a workhorse facilitating transportation across the river and into the city. Social issues drove the construction of the bridge—traffic that accompanied the expanding urban population base required a more efficient way for rail, pedestrian, and vehicular travel to proceed simultaneously on the same bridge. Indeed, there are multiple methods of movement across the bridge: two lanes on the edge of the road for carriages, inside lanes for streetcars, and an elevated path for pedestrians that made possible a luxurious and safe walk to enjoy the view. John Augustus Roebling began the bridge in 1869 and was later joined by his son, Washington August Roebling, in 1883.

The building of the Brooklyn Bridge was accomplished through the maximization of the forces of [Page 100]both compression in the massive piers and suspension in the huge steel cables that hang from the piers and hold the roadbed in the air. It is a suspension bridge composed with a form endowed with great visual comprehensibility and beauty of form and line. Although the massive piers are in some ways simple and even plain, they reveal an eclectic mix of historical revival styles. Described best as Egyptogothic-Roman, the weight, the taper, and the modulation of the surface represent influences from each architectural tradition and project a significant impression of strength and weight while at the same time doing what they were intended to do. The simple Gothic lancet arches present the principal openings for the roadbed to pass through, and the cables function in two ways, both according to structural logic. The buttresses attached to the sides of the Roman arches are another reference to Gothic architecture. The roadbed itself soars in a single gesture, gliding and curving with the river from one side to the other, expressing neither compression nor tension, but moving because of both. The result is a dramatic interaction among forces, materials, forms, and visual lines—all created in heroic dimensions and scale.

Roebling was recognized for his double system of steel suspension cables, which demonstrate new engineering knowledge and the use of newest materials. To support the enormous weight of the bridge, two different systems of cables were used. The first were vertical cables moving in parabolic curves from the tops of the piers. The second were cables that moved directly from the top of one pier to the next. Roebling is also known for the innovative method of spinning high tensile steel cables as well as radiating stays, which created aerodynamic stability for the bridge suspended high above the river. The tensile strength of the spidery steel cables pulls them into stretched curves, raylike lines in the sky, and plumb lines reflective of harps. Significant bracing was required from the deck to resist wind and vibration.

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