Lady from New York: BROOKLYN BRIDGE 1940

The history of the Brooklyn Bridge, engineering a love story. Imagine New York City’s Gilded Age on May 24th, 1883. Celebrations are taking place simultaneously in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Amidst lavish pageantry and blasts of fireworks thunderously defying the evening sky, two of the world’s most prominent cities have become one.

The focus of all this fanfare? John Augustus Roebling’s masterful engineering feat, the Brooklyn Bridge. And at the heart of this iconic bridge, an understated love story.

You might ask why the jubilance? For one thing, the bridge itself should have been impossible. It is an engineering marvel. It measures 5,989 feet in length (just shy of a mile), 85 feet in width, and a 276.5-foot height above the water, allowing easy passage for merchant ships.

Of greater importance, the bridge promised the immediate transformation of millions of lives. Brooklyn had a massive resource that Manhattan’s mounting industrialization required: workers. And the bridge delivered