How the Brooklyn Bridge went from being a ‘wild experiment’ in architecture to becoming designated a historical landmark 140 years later

• The history of the Brooklyn Bridge is filled with death, disease, and controversy.
• The main architect died before the bridge was even built, and several workers died in the process.
• Tools and techniques used to build the bridge — then thought to be a “wild experiment” — are commonly used today.

 The Brooklyn Bridge, one of New York City’s famous landmarks, turned 140 this year, and its history has been wrought with death, disease, and controversy.

During the bridge’s construction, over a dozen people died, while countless others were bedridden with a then mysterious illness, including the bridge’s architect Washington Roebling.

Most deaths involved with the Brooklyn Bridge happened during its construction, except for Roebling’s father, John Augustus Roebling, the man behind the bridge’s design who died from an illness weeks before construction was supposed to start. 

The bridge was made to connect Brooklyn and Manhattan in place of regularly scheduled ferries. It is estimated that over 70 million crossings were made across the river separating the two cities yearly before the construction of the bridge.

But after a crash between two ferries in 1868 injured 20 people and killed a young boy, public support for the bridge to be built was on the rise, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Washington Roebling took up the task of completing what was the longest bridge in the world at the time, and he had to do it with only the notes left by his late father. If the bridge were a success, the world would remember the Roeblings’ ingenuity and engineering prowess. But if it failed, the sole responsibility would be put on him.