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

by David McCullough

The suspended roadway’s great “river span” was to be held between the towers by the four immense cables, two outer ones and two near the middle of the bridge floor. These cables would be as much as fifteen inches in diameter and each would hang over the river in what is known as a catenary curve, that perfect natural form taken by any rope or cable suspended from two points, which in this case were the summits of the two stone towers. At the bottom of the curve each cable would join with the river span, at the center of the span. But all along the cables, vertical “suspenders,” wire ropes about as thick as a pick handle, would be strung like harp strings down to the bridge floor. And across those would run a pattern of diagonal, or inclined, stays, hundreds of heavy wire ropes that would radiate down from the towers and secure at various points along the bridge floor, both in the direction of the land and toward the center of the river span.

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