“I cannot reconcile myself”: Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 44.
“So he took to engineering again”: WAR to JAR II, winter 1893-94. RUL.
“The iron ore on Laurel Hill”: JAR, RUL; also quoted in Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 53.
German periodical the source of the wire rope idea: Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 50.
“His ambition now became boundless”: WAR to JAR II, winter 1893-94. RUL.
“…farmers were metamorphosed into mechanics”: Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 60.
WAR’s description of wire rope making: WAR, Early History of Saxonburg, pp. 13—14.
“…benefactors to mankind who employ science”: Quoted in Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 73.
“As this work is the first of the kind”: Craig, The Olden Time, Vol. 1, pp. 45-48.
“The progress of the fire”: Pittsburgh Gazette reporter quoted in Lorant, Pittsburgh; The Story of an American City, p. 110.
“Great Central Railroad” speech: American Railroad Journal, Special Edition, 1847; also quoted in part in Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 65-71.
Never home in springtime: Elvira Roebling to JAR, March 14, 1860. RUL.
JAR’s letters to Charles Swan are in the RUL; also quoted at length in Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 93-114.
“I for my part wish the blacks all good fortune”: JAR, Diary of My Journey, p. 118.
“…legs under my mahogany long enough”: Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 189.
“When a whole nation…steeped for a whole century in sins”; “We cannot close our eyes to the appalling fact”: JAR philosophical papers. RUL.
“A pure-hearted woman or one gifted with warmer affections”: WAR to EWR, August 2, 1864. RUL.
“My dearly beloved wife, Johanna”: Bible page reproduced in Schuyler, The Roeblings, opposite p. 99.
Prayed he would never have to read Roebling’s philosophy: Ibid., p. 13.
“We are born to work and study”; “True life is not only active”; “It is a want of my intellectual nature”; “Human reason is the work of God”: JAR philosophical papers. RUL.
Davis plan proposed to Horace Greeley: The letter in the RUL collection is undated but refers to the “recent foreign war,” meaning the war with Mexico no doubt, so it was probably written between 1848 and 1850. There is no indication whether the letter ever appeared in the Tribune.
The incident involving young Edmund Roebling, as well as Edmund’s subsequent life, is described by WAR in a private memorandum written March 16, 1922. RUL.
“A man may be content with the success of an enterprise”: JAR philsophical papers. RUL.
“The latest sensation we have had here are spiritual communications”: Ferdinand Roebling to WAR, November 12, 1867. RUL.
Seances: From original questions and notes made by JAR. RPI.
Light topcoat and soft felt hat: A rare photograph taken at Niagara of the engineers in the Bridge Party shows both JAR and WAR. It is the only known photograph of father and son together and reveals how remarkably alike they looked. RPI.
3 The Genuine Language of America
The description of the Bridge Party’s tour has been drawn almost entirely from three long articles by Thomas Kinsella that appeared in the Eagle, April 16, 17, and 26. Interestingly, the local papers in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Niagara Falls did little more than mention the arrival of the “visitors from the East.”
James Finley is a fascinating but somewhat shadowy figure. He is given only passing mention in most histories of civil engineering and is referred to as a justice of the peace or judge, but in the classic work The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania by Solon J. and Elizabeth Hawthorn Buck, Finley is an itinerant preacher, who earlier in his career had been sent into the wilderness of western Pennsylvania to put down a burgeoning new-state movement—a mission he accomplished with amazing skill and speed. His patented chain bridge was first described by Thomas Pope in A Treatise on Bridge Architecture, published in 1811.
Smithfield Street Bridge: American Railroad Journal, February 21, 1846; also in Craig, The Olden Time, Vol. I, pp. 286-288.
Allegheny River Bridge: White and von Bernewitz, The Bridges of Pittsburgh.
“The bridge will be beautiful”: JAR to Charles Swan, June 21, 1859, RUL; also quoted in Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 108.
“Washington is about the work”: JAR to Charles Swan, RUL; also quoted in Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 206.
Cincinnati Bridge: JAR, “The Cincinnati Suspension Bridge,” Engineering (London), Vol. 40, pp. 22-23, 49, 74-76, 98-99, 140-141; JAR, Report of John A. Roebling, C.E., to the President and Directors of the New York Bridge Company, on the Proposed East River Bridge, LER; Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 125-128; Farrington, A Full and Complete Description of the Covington and Cincinnati Suspension Bridge with Dimensions and Details of Construction.
“The Germans about here are mostly loyal”: JAR to Charles Swan, spring of 1863, RUL; also quoted in Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 110.
“The size and magnitude of this work far surpass any expectations”: WAR to Charles Swan, March 16, 1865, RUL; also in Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 234.
“Leave bridgebuilding to younger folks”: JAR to Charles Swan, April 1865, RUL; also quoted in Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 114.
“You drive over to Suspension Bridge”: Quoted in Gies, Bridges and Men, p. 188.
Niagara Bridge: Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 118—124; Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, pp. 157-193; Stuart, Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America; Kirby and Laurson, The Early Tears of Modern Civil Engineering, pp. 155—156. There is also a superb scale model of the bridge on display in the Museum of History and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution.
Maid of the Mist shoots the rapids: The best description is in Anthony Trollope’s North America.
Early suspension bridges: Of the numerous histories of bridges the most readable and reliable is Bridges and Men by Joseph Gies. See also Bridges and Their Builders by David B. Steinman and Sara Ruth Watson.
Charles Ellet: Stuart’s biographical sketch in Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America, pp. 257-285, miscellaneous newspaper clippings, RPI.
Roebling aspires to be Ellet’s assistant: Letter quoted in Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 54—55.
Homer Walsh: Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 163.
Ellet drew up cannon: WAR to F. M. Colby of Dodd, Mead & Co., February 1907. RUL.
“Before entering upon any important work”: Stuart, Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America, p. 325.
“The only real difficulty of the task”: JAR, Report on the Niagara Bridge, Buffalo, 1852. RUL.
JAR not the innovator of stiff roadway, anchor stays, or the first to spin cables in place: Steinman mistakenly credits Roebling with all three, either directly or by implication, in The Builders of the Bridge, pp. 81, 172.
“In the anxiety to obtain a light roadway”: ASCE, Transactions, 1868-71, a paper by Edward P. North, March 4, 1868, which contains one of the very best accounts of the evolution of the suspension bridge and its refinements.
JAR’s disdain for English bridgebuilders: JAR letter quoted by Stuart, Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America, pp. 306-308.
Eyewitness account of Wheeling Bridge failure: Wheeling Intelligencer, May 18, 1854; also quoted in Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 171.
“…there are no safer bridges”: Steinman and Watson, Bridges and Their Builders, p. 209.
JAR’s explanation of the Wheeling failure: Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, pp. 182-183.
Ellet rebuilt the bridge himself: Research by C. M. Lewis, S.J., of Wheeling College, West Virginia, reported in ASCE, Civil Engineering, September 1969.
“My bridge is the admiration of everybody”; “We had a tremendous gale”; “No one is afraid to cross”: JAR to Charles Swan. RUL.
Slocum toast:
Eagle, July 26, 1869.
“…the great achievements of the present”: Whitman, Passage to India.
“one of the victories of peace”: Harper’s Weekly, May 29, 1869.
“The chief engineers became his heroes”: Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea, pp. 247—249.
4 Father and Son
“Nothing lasts forever”: WAR to JAR II, March 6, 1894. RUL.
Job applicants and JAR’s comments: JAR’s address book, 1869. RUL.
WAR’s notes and diagrams for the center line: Black leather notebook kept by WAR, 1869. RPI.
“Your Turkish Bath tickets came today”: WAR to JAR, May 21, 1869. RUL.
Meetings with Rawlins: Described by WAR in several letters to JAR, June 1869. RUL.
Consultants’ approval published: Report of the Board of Consulting Engineers to the Directors of the New York Bridge Company.
Revisions in design as a result of War Department directive: WAR.
“Introductory Remarks,” Pneumatic Tower Foundations of the East River Suspension Bridge. LER.
“This bridge is to be built”: The New York Times, July 23, 1869.
“He felt at his age he could ill afford to lose any time”: WAR in an “Introduction” to JAR’s Long and Short Span Railway Bridges.
This description of the accident is drawn largely from an account in the Eagle, July 22, 1869.
“There is no such thing as chance”: Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 320.
Death of JAR: Various items in the Eagle in the days that followed; later remarks made by WAR (RUL and RPI); Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 139—140; description of tetanus in The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy.
Instructions to Ed Riedel: Schuyler, The Roeblings, p. 140.
“He who loses his life from injuries”: Eagle, July 22, 1869.
“The name of John A. Roebling”: EWR to JAR, January 6, 1868. RUL.
Gifts for Elvira: From purchases listed in JAR’s Private Cash Account, 1867-69. RPI.
Wedding gifts for the second Mrs. JAR: Ibid.
Contents of will: JAR will dated September 14, 1867, RUL; also covered in some detail in Schuyler, The Roeblings, pp. 145-146.
Funeral: Both the Eagle and the Trenton Daily State Gazette for July 26, 1869, carried long descriptive accounts.
“With its inspiration gone”: Steinman and Watson, Bridges and Their Builders, p. 236; Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, p. 323.
“Not long since, before the accident”: Eagle, July 22, 1869.
“First—I was the only living man”: WAR to James Rusling, January 23, 1916. RUL.
“…At the time of his death he was already arranging”: WAR to William Couper, July 26, 1907. RUL.
“The great boast of this land…jabbering and wrangling politicians”: Eagle, July 27, 1869.
5 Brooklyn
“transformed…from insignificance”: The City of Brooklyn, a guidebook.
Third-largest city: Syrett, The City of Brooklyn, 1865-1898, p. 12.
Types of manufacturing: Ibid., pp. 14—15.
“an enigma to the respectable”: Ibid., p. 29.
East River shipyards and virtues as a harbor: Albion, The Rise of New York Port (1815-1860).
More ships than New York and Hoboken combined: Syrett, The City of Brooklyn, p. 139.
Salt air “pure and bracing…”: Stiles, A History of the City of Brooklyn, Vol. II, p. 504.
“the most majestic views of land and ocean”: Attributed to James S. T. Stranahan in The City of Brooklyn.
Banquet on board City of Brooklyn: Eagle, April 15, 1869.
Hezekiah Pierrepont and the development of Brooklyn Heights: Stiles, A History of the City of Brooklyn.
“Almost everybody appears to have built his house”: Eagle, June 22, 1872.
“elegant equipages, well-dressed grooms”: Old Brooklyn Heights, pp. 33-34.
“His knowledge of fish”: National Cyclopedia of American Biography.
Henry Ward Beecher: Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York, pp. 86-100; McCabe, Lights and Shadows of New York Life, pp. 655-657; Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee; a long profile in the Eagle, March 10, 1869.
“He went marching up and down the stage”: Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, pp. 23—24.
“Our institutions live in him”: Eagle, March 10, 1869.
“A more intelligent body”: From the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, quoted in the Eagle, January 1872.
Charles Dickens on Brooklyn: Quoted in Still, Mirror for Gotham, p. 204.
Brooklyn slums: According to The New York Times, June 30, 1866, “dirt and filth and poverty reign triumphant…Here homeless and vagabond children, ragged and dirty, wander about…decaying garbage, dead animals, filth and unclean privies, with crowds of unwashed human beings [are] packed together…”
The Kingsley-McCue-Murphy meeting is reported in the Eagle, May 24, 1883; also in Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge, pp. 302-303.
General Johnson’s opposition to a bridge: Long Island Star, February 13, 1834; Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge; Fact and Symbol, pp. 35-36.
HCM’s Mansion House speech: A commemorative booklet on the farewell dinner, LIH; also quoted in the Eagle, December 2, 1882.
William C. Kingsley: Obituaries in The New York Times, New York World, and Eagle, February 21, 1885; in memoriam booklet, W. C. Kingsley, LIH; Green, A Complete History of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge from its Conception in 1866 to its Completion in 1883; Stiles, The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, Vol I, pp. 463—464; Eagle History of Brooklyn, Eagle, May 24, 1883; scrapbooks in LIH collection; Syrett, The City of Brooklyn, pp. 74-76.
Henry C. Murphy: Obituaries in The New York Times, New York World, and Eagle, December 2, 1882; scrapbooks in LIH collection; Green, A Complete History of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge; Stiles, The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, Vol. I, pp. 360—366; Eagle, May 24, 1883; Stiles, A History of the City of Brooklyn, Vol. II, pp. 266-270.
McLaughlin the first to be called “Boss”: Syrett, The City of Brooklyn, p. 71.
“very earnest in manner”: Stiles, A History of the City of Brooklyn, p. 269.
“It was not a change for the better”: Eagle, December 2, 1882.
“Mr. Murphy only failed as a politician”: Stiles, The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History of the County of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, Vol. I, p. 364.
WAR’s private remarks on the role played by Julius Adams: Personal notebook, entry dated January 6, 1880. RPI.
HCM named president: New York and Brooklyn Bridge Proceedings, 1867-1884, p. 319.
The name Roebling “invaluable”: Kingsley, in a speech given on the opening of the bridge, May 24, 1883.
“Confidence on the part of the public”: New York and Brooklyn Bridge Proceedings, p. 320.
6 The Proper Person to See
“Who owns the City of New York today?”: Quoted in Syrett, The City of Brooklyn, 1865-1898, p. 19.
Tweed’s prior interest in the Brooklyn ferry lines: Lynch, “Boss” Tweed, pp. 70-75.
New York in 1869: Still, Mirror for Gotham; McCabe, Lights and Shadows of New York Life; Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York; Harper’s Weekly for 1869; Crapsey, The Nether Side of New York.
“…a rich field for clever money lovers”: Olof Olson to his brother, September 11, 1869, quoted in Land That Our Fathers Plowed, David Greenberg, ed., University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.
William M. Tweed and his cohorts: Werner, Tammany Hall; Lynch, “Boss” Tweed; Callow, The Tweed Ring; Harper’s Weekly; Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Vol. II; McCabe, Lights and Shadows of New York Life; Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York; Dictionary of American Biography.
“I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles”: Callow, The Tweed Ring, p. 254.
“Tweed had an abounding vitality”: Bryce, T
he American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 383.
Tweed and the first session of the Executive Committee: New York and Brooklyn Bridge Proceedings, 1867-1884, p. 526.
Tweed’s testimony: As recorded before a committee of the Common Council of the City of New York, September 18, 1877; quoted also in Testimony in the Miller Suit to Remove the East River Bridge, “Exhibit A,” pp. 58-63.
“a strong combination made against the measure”: Kingsley to JAR, April 16, 1868. RUL.
Chambers Street courthouse: The best account of this incredible story is in Callow, The Tweed Ring, the chapter titled “The House That Tweed Built,” pp. 198-206, which also appeared in American Heritage, October 1965.
Bridge Company stockholders as of autumn 1869: New York and Brooklyn Bridge Proceedings, “Exhibit C,” Part I, p. 167.
“…therefore he was the proper person to see”: Eagle, September 19, 1877.
Beach tunnel: Scientific American, February 19, 1870; “Alfred Ely Beach and His Wonderful Pneumatic Underground Railway” by Robert Daley, American Heritage, June 1961.
Black Friday: Swanberg, Jim Fisk: The Career of an Improbable Rascal, pp. 149-153.
Cardiff Giant: Harper’s Weekly, October 1869; Franco, “The Cardiff Giant: A Hundred-Year-Old Hoax.” The Giant itself is still drawing crowds at the Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, New York. Once having seen the Giant, most twentieth-century onlookers find it hard to believe anyone ever took it seriously.
“all were disgusted”: Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, p. 273.
7 The Chief Engineer
Assistant engineers: Various memoirs published by the ASCE; National Cyclopedia of American Biography; biographical sketches in the Eagle, May 24, 1883; odd notes made by WAR, RPI.
Claims of Samuel Barnes B. Nolan: Scientific American, August 7, 1869.
“the details not having been considered”: New York Tribune, May 23, 1883.
“very versatile attainments”: From an unpublished biographical sketch of WAR by EWR. RPI.
“rather indifferent to matters of courtesy”: EWR to JAR, January 6, 1868. RUL.