The work which is likely to be our most durable
monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to
the remotest posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a
shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge.
âMONTGOMERY SCHUYLER
B
rooklyn Heights was quiet this afternoon. It was always quiet. Home to some of the most prominent citizens of both Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Heights represented the very best of suburban living. Solid middle-and upper-class residences marched down dappled, tree-lined streets in sober respectability. Cobbles echoed with the occasional carriage. Children played. Strollers enjoyed the pleasant breezes. Across the river all was push and shove and no apology. The financial center bustled, the docks swarmed, the hungry begged. Here on Brooklyn Heights, where the famous Henry Ward Beecher intoned from his pulpit every Sunday, all was serenity.
That was one of the things that had drawn Emily and Washington Roebling to the place, that and the view. The view was critical. Nowhere else in either city commanded such a view of the East River. From Staten Island to the south, New Jersey to the east, and Harlem to the north, the panorama of the city and its harbor was spread out before the Heights. Most important of all was the view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Emily and Washington had needed a special house, one with an unobstructed view of the bridge, where quiet was the order of the day. As chief engineer, Washington needed both. Since being disabled with caisson disease years before, he had never again visited the construction site. Instead, he watched from the window of 110 Columbia Heights. It was the last house on the street, closest to the bridge, and both peaceful and ideally situated for the Roeblings' purposes. Perhaps best was the fact that it was only a ten-minute carriage ride to the site, a ride that Emily took two or three times a day. She was her husband's eyes and ears at the bridge. She was
his mouthpiece, secretary, plan reader, negotiator, mediator, assistant engineer, technical advisor, and political representative. As far as most of the engineers and assistants, foremen and workers were concerned, she was the chief engineer.
Emily threw on a light coat before going out this quiet afternoon. Her husband seemed vaguely put out that she was leaving.
“Do you have to go this afternoon, Em?”
“You know I do, Wash,” she said, ignoring his tone. She knew as well as he that there was no good reason for her not to go. They had all the important work done for the day. “You said yourself you'd need that book in the next day or so. I may as well get it now, because I certainly won't have time tomorrow.”
“I suppose you're right. It's easier to go to the Astor Library than to get it from Rensselaer Polytechnic; that's the only other place I know of that has it.”
“It's just so frustrating,” Emily said, clicking her tongue. “A city the size of New York needs a real public library, not just one, but dozens. I'm afraid that until the ponderous Mayor Edson gets his ponderousâ”
“Be kind, dear,” Wash admonished.
Emily smiled. “âpersonage before the city council and fights for it, we won't have it. As for Brooklyn, that could take decades.”
“It's a worthy cause, Em. Knowledge is the key to a better life.” Nobody knew that better than Roebling, whose father had set a rigid Germanic example of devotion to higher learning and hard work.
“Unfortunately, I don't think Tammany Hall is too interested in libraries unless there's something in it for them. Look at the Tweed courthouse; thirteen million dollars! The whole bridge won't cost that much. Plenty of scoundrels got rich off that project. Tweed was just the tip of the iceberg,” Washington said bitterly.
“Dear, there's no point getting upset about it. You'll just start one of your terrible headaches.”
“You're right, as usual,” Wash conceded. “It's just that when I think of how Tweed almost sank the bridge too, it makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Those days, nothing got done without Tweed's hand in it, at least not in New York,” Emily said, remembering how hard it had been to understand at the time. “Henry brought him in only because he had to.” There had been no other way.
“It's true,” Wash admitted. “The bond issue would never have gotten out of committee. It still burns me that Bill had to take a ferry across the river with a bag full of money to pay off the aldermen.” Wash almost spat at the recollection.
Emily, who was in some ways more practical, just smiled, saying, “Not a bad investment really. It paid big dividends for Bill Kingsley over the years. Sixty thousand dollars is a lot of money by any standard, but it's been a good deal all around.” It was far more than a “good deal,” as they both knew. As general contractor, Kingsley had made a fortune on the bridge.
Wash grunted. “And for Tweed too, for a while. Sitting on our executive committee like a three-hundred-pound leech, looking to suck the bridge dry.” Roebling shook his head scornfully.
“Well, he's gone now, and good riddance,” Emily said for both of them.
“Seconded, my dear!” he said with a small laugh. “By the way, you know, I've still got correspondence to get out to Martin and Hildenbrand about the specs for the supports on the train tracks, the placement of the light stanchions, and half a dozen other things.”
Emily looked at her husband with more than a little exasperation. “Wash, the bridge is almost done. It's two-thirty in the afternoon. I think you can spare my help till later.” Emily rarely denied her husband anything. After all the years of work, she had only the slightest regret at denying him now. “Surely it can wait, darling, and if I tarry another second, I'll be late for my meeting with Mr. Saunders, the librarian.” She came to him, her skirts rustling like a spring breeze through the treetops. She kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I won't be late, and don't worry, we'll do our correspondence first thing in the morning.” She gave her husband a disarming smile. “I'll deliver it myself.”
Wash smiled up at her from his seat at his desk. “As usual, my dear, you are very persuasive. I probably won't be up when you get back. It's been a long day. I may play a bit though. Could you tell Martha on your way out to start a hot bath for me in about fifteen minutes?”
Emily stopped in the kitchen to tell Martha to start a bath. She closed the solid mahogany door behind her with a thud and click as the heavy brass latch sprang into place. Just as she stepped up into their carriage, she heard the gentle sounds of Wash's violin. He had started playing again recently. Though his playing was hesitant, it was good to hear. He had been considered a very good violinist years ago, but the violin had sat in a corner of their parlor, silent since '72. Nearly eleven years, Emily mused. She had imagined more than once that it sang to him from its resting place. She knew it had pained him not to be able to play due to his illness. Every so often, he'd oil the wood, caressing the curves with longing. He'd always lay it back in its case with a cradling hand.
It warmed her to hear the violin again. He was getting better. She knew it. As surely as the caisson disease had first crippled her husband, it was the weight of his responsibility as chief engineer that heightened his illness and
prolonged his recovery. Washington still worked just as hard on almost every detail of the construction, though the bridge was almost done. The immense hurdles of engineering, politics, corruption, tragedy, fraud, and near disaster were history now. As the weight of the bridge was lifted by the cables he had designed, so was the weight of responsibility suspended. He was getting better. Emily smiled to herself as the carriage pulled away, down Columbia Heights. The sounds of her husband's violin followed her, growing fainter and softer, till she had to strain to hear it over the sound of the horse's hooves on the cobbles. Then it was gone.
The carriage stopped after a few minutes, at the new Fulton Ferry Terminal, which stood almost at the base of the Brooklyn tower of the bridge. There were five different ferry lines, with service from South Street, Fulton Street, Wall Street, Catherine Street, and Roosevelt Street, all operated by the Union Ferry Company. Fulton was the busiest. Thirteen ferries chugged back and forth across the East River night and day. They were not small boats: 150 to 170 feet long, they could accommodate hundreds of passengers at a time, along with carriages and wagons, yet they were still not enough to keep up with the traffic. Why the ferry company had invested in a new terminal right in the shadow of the bridge, Emily couldn't understand. Maybe they knew something the rest of the city didn't. Building a new terminal, with a big bronze statue of Robert Fulton over the entrance surely didn't look like a good investment. She watched as the ferryboat
Winona
pulled into the dock and offloaded the early commuters, heading home from their jobs in Manhattan. Soon they'd be able to walk across the East River. She herself had done that just over a year ago.
All the suspending cables had been strung by then and the steel beams that were to support the roadway had been attached to them so it looked like a big ladder sailing across the river. A five-foot-wide plank walkway had been laid down for the workers to use during construction. It had been arranged that she and the mayors of Brooklyn and New York as well as the trustees of the bridge and a few others would take a ceremonial walk across the river. It was a great honor, of course. Although there had been many unofficial crossings of the bridge once the footbridge had been hung, she was to be the first woman officially to cross the span.
The footbridge, by contrast, had been quite a tourist attraction. It had been suspended before there were any beams, or roadway, following the same arc as the cables it was hung from. It was designed to provide the riggers with access to the various platforms, where they did the work of attaching the suspenders and beams. She knew it well, having relayed the instructions for its construction from her husband to Martin and Hildenbrand. It had been much higher
than the roadway. Charles C. Martin, the second in command to Roebling, crossed on Washington's birthday 1877 along with his daughters. It made all the papers. “Beauty and the Bridge” was the headline. Emily thought that Martin was mad for taking his daughters out on the thing. She had seen men trembling and ashen after going out on it, their hands raw from gripping the rope handrails. The public was not really restricted from crossing, though, and Emily recalled Martin saying afterward that he spent nearly all morning most days just issuing passes to those who wanted to take the death-defying walk.
It had been a beautiful early December day when she had taken her ceremonial stroll. She had met E. F. Farrington, the master mechanic for the bridge, by the Brooklyn tower. She still remembered their dizzying climb up the spiral staircase. It was attached to the tower and ran clear to the top. They ascended to the level of the roadway, exhilarated and out of breath. In a few minutes Mayor Howell of Brooklyn, the new mayor of New York, William Grace, and a delegation of the bridge trustees joined them. There was much hand-shaking and congratulating, but that wasn't what Emily remembered best.
When she looked back on it now, she thought mostly of seagulls. They wheeled, dipped, dove, and sailed over the blue-green, white-capped water, their shrill cries punctuating their conversation. They were everywhere, soaring above the towers and scudding down below her feet. Their snowy, knife-edge wings danced on the wind. They rowed the air with effortless strokes. Emily almost felt she was a bird herself. The wind hummed through the cables. She could actually see them vibrate, and the low hum they made was the music of the bridge. The cries of the seagulls were its chorus. The city stretched out before her, from the Battery to Harlem. She could see the Hudson, to the west, and Bedloe's Island, waiting for the Statue of Liberty. Ferries passed under the bridge, their tall stacks belching black. Sailing vessels of every description plied the choppy waters, their sails painfully white and close-hauled against the wind. It was magnificent. For someone who had never been higher than a five-story building, it was a revelation.
She was giddy, and not a little frightened. There seemed to be cavernous gaps between the steel beams under the walkway. Emily had felt that each crack between the boards yawned wide enough to fall through. The boards creaked, the rope handrails blew with the wind. The cables sang. The gulls called, raucous and plaintive. When they reached the center of the span, they stopped to watch a clipper ship. It passed beneath them, tall masts looking like they'd catch on the roadway. Emily looked down, bending over one of the main cables as the ship slipped silently by. Sailors waved up to her, and she waved back. She could almost reach out and touch them in the rigging. Forgetting herself for a moment, she bent farther over the big cable and let her feet
leave the boardwalk. She recalled Mayor Howell and Farrington looking at her with a mixture of amusement and wonder. Emily hadn't cared. She regained her ladylike composure, but the look of rapture never left her face. She looked back toward Brooklyn Heights, seeking out the window in her brownstone. Wash had been there, watching. She knew he saw her with the telescope by the window. She turned full toward the house. Straight and tall she'd stood, her hair blowing, the wind tugging at her dress. Emily remembered standing still for a long moment, oblivious to all around her. She stared at his window and sent herself over the water to him on that blustery December day, willing her thoughts across the space between them.