The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge in CMU Alumni Association Faculty Bookshelf

Apr 01, 2020 Cindy Leighton rated it really liked it

Shelves: us-history

Encompassing the fourteen years (1869-1883) that it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge, McCullough brings to life the lives of the father and son, John and Washington Roebling, who were most responsible for the dream, design, and construction of the bridge; describes in detail the engineering marvel that is the construction of the bridge; sets the historic context of the Boss Tweed New York corruption of the time as well as the incredible pride and wonder people had at the building of the Bridge; Encompassing the fourteen years (1869-1883) that it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge, McCullough brings to life the lives of the father and son, John and Washington Roebling, who were most responsible for the dream, design, and construction of the bridge; describes in detail the engineering marvel that is the construction of the bridge; sets the historic context of the Boss Tweed New York corruption of the time as well as the incredible pride and wonder people had at the building of the Bridge; details the great personal sacrifices countless men made as they battled the bends (at the time not understood and called "caisson's sickness") and horrific deaths and injuries in the construction; as well as highlighting the important role Washington Roebling's wife Emily played.

Part biography, part history, part scientific journal - classic McCullough. This is the eleventh McCullough book I have read - obviously a fan. He does a terrific job of choosing topics that are heroic and fascinating, and then diving deeply into them. I think of his topical books (as compared to his biographical books) I preferred the one on the Panama Canal to this one, but they are both impressive feats of engineering and overcame considerable political squabbling.

I think I was most impressed by the building of the caissons - enormous wooden structures larger than St Peter's Cathedral - that were sunk into the River on either shore; the filled with compressed air so that men could be lowered into them and dig out the rock below, slowly digging their way down and eventually filling them with concrete to form the base for the signature towers that anchor the enormous suspension bridge. It was these enormous caissons that gave men The Bends - which were not understood at the time. Roebling himself suffered. They even eventually had to blast rock inside these caissons, experimenting with gunfire at first, then tiny explosions, not knowing exactly what impact the explosions would have inside these enclosed underwater compressed airlocks. This all before they start building high up - and the incredible dangers that came with building across a raging river and the dangers of plummeting hundreds of feet to your death, which more than a few men did.

So many tragic stories. The original designer of the bridge - John Roebling, would contract tetanus and die a painful death a year after designing the bridge and not live to see its construction. His son, not a trained engineer, would spend time in Europe absorbing everything he could about caisson construction and return to New York to oversee the most massive use of them ever undertaken. And the corruption. So much money to be made off these enormous contracts. McCullough takes us through the steel contracts for the enormous amounts of steel needed for the cables to hold up the suspension bridge - and how sub par steel was substituted after inspection.

And as we see so often in history, a woman in the shadows plays a very important but at the time largely unrecognized role. Washington Roebling, the chief engineer of the entire project, had serious health problems throughout the construction. His wife Emily conducted much of his business, recognized by some even at the time as McCullough points out.

I give the book four instead of five stars because there were certainly times McCullough dove too deeply into the engineering for my feeble mind to stay interested. I did often go to the internet and look up pictures to understand what he was talking about - so I learned an awful lot about bridge construction, which was fascinating. I am sure the engineers who read this book think he spent too much time talking about the lives of the people involved and the impact the bridge had on history :-). Well worth the read, and remembering a time when people would gather by the thousands to watch construction of a bridge, and to marvel at engineering. The bridge stands strong today - carrying loads Roebling could never have imagined. And engineers say it will easily stand strong another hundred years or more. Impressive indeed. ...more

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