The Brooklyn Bridge and Hart Crane
Stephen Bayley, in “The Brooklyn Bridge — an engineering masterpiece and symbol of unity,” observed that “Hart Crane’s 1930 poem ‘The Bridge’, an ecstatic hymn to all things pontine with atmospheric photographs by his friend, Walker Evans. This was a year after the opening of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and techno-romanticism was dans le…
Why the Brooklyn Bridge Still Stands—Part 2 The Engineering Fact
John Augustus Roebling called steel the “METAL OF THE FUTURE” and was the first to use galvanized steel in bridge construction a year after its commercial introduction in the United States. The Roeblings practiced what they preached. They BUILT STRONG BRIDGES, using generous amounts of the STRONGEST and BEST MATERIALS to ADD STRENGTH and STABILITY…
Why the Brooklyn Bridge Still Stands—Part 1 The Roebling Family of Engineer
John August Roebling, a Prussian immigrant, had studied both engineering and philosophy. He emigrated to America to become a bridge builder. When he began his bridge-building career in the USA, from the very beginning he always built his bridges always to be as strong as possible. None of the bridges he ever built fell down. …
The Official Name of the Brooklyn Bridge
Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and as the East River Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name from an earlier January 25, 1867, letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government in 1915 when it took over direct operation…
The Brooklyn Bridge as a Cinematic Star
The Brooklyn Bridge has been a favorite film location for countless movies. The Brooklyn Bridge IS New York City. More than the Statue of Liberty, which we have to share with those guys over in New Jersey; more than the Empire State Building, which we have to share with the rest of America; more than…
The Brooklyn Bridge and Star Trek
The Brooklyn Bridge has appeared in time travel stories as a timeless wonder. “The City on the Edge of Forever” is the twenty-eighth and penultimate episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek. The episode had several writers contribute to the finished product including: Harlan Ellison, Steven W. Carabatsos,…
The Jews and the Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge was designed by an architectural firm owned by John Augustus Roebling who, though a Lutheran, was descended from Sephardic Jews who had migrated to Germany from Spain. Soon after the bridge opened, Jews began an annual tradition of walking across it on Rosh Hashanah to recite Tashlich; also exhibited with this column is…
The Brooklyn Bridge Part X: Bibliography of Children’s Books
Prentzas, G. S. The Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Facts on File, 2009. Prince, April Jones. Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005. Dougherty, Rachel. Secret Engineer: How Emily Roebling Built the Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2019 Ratliff, Thomas M. and Salariya, David. You Wouldn’t Want to Work…
Time Out New York: Brooklyn Bridge Walk into the New Year
As posted on Time Out New York’s New Year’s Eve fireworks in NYC. Check out the best New Year’s Eve fireworks NYC has to offer and ring in 2019 with a bang (literally) Guides trained by historian and tour leader Dr. Phil (not that one) organize multiple groups to take in the New Year from…
Walt Whitman and the Brooklyn Bridge
“Silence and Denial: Walt Whitman and the Brooklyn Bridge” by Arthur Geffen “THE RECENT CENTENNIAL of the Brooklyn Bridge has occasioned a small spate of journalistic legends about Walt Whitman’s reaction to what could be fairly described as the greatest technological achievement in late nineteenth-century America.” “The two short references he did make suggest the…