The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

by David McCullough

Roebling did not get out of his carriage the day he came to inspect the Brooklyn terminal. After he had seen enough he was driven home again. So not once in all fourteen years did he ever set foot on the bridge.

In another time and in what would seem another world, on a day when two young men were walking on the moon, a very old woman on Long Island would tell reporters that the public excitement over the feat was not so much compared to what she had seen “on the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge.”

With normal maintenance, say the engineers, the bridge will last another hundred years.