Brooklyn Bridge Essay

The Brooklyn Bridge (initially known as the "New York and Brooklyn Bridge") links the districts of Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City . It was built between 1870 and 1883 and, at the time of its inauguration, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world (1825 meters long, and the light between pillars is 486.3 meters), a record of light until 1889 the Forth Bridge is built , with a maximum light of 521 m. It was also the first suspended by steel cables . Since then, it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of New York . It is an emblem of nineteenth-century engineering because it was innovative at that time the use of steel as a building material on a large scale. It is so well constructed that it is still in use today.
Roebling and his firm had previously built smaller suspension bridges , such as the Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen( Pennsylvania ), the Hanging Bridge in Cincinnati ( Ohio ), or the Hanging Bridge in Waco ( Texas ), which served as a prototype for the final design of the Brooklyn Bridge. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began on January 2, 1870, and ended thirteen years later, on May 24 , 1883, when it was opened to the public. The first day was crossed by a total of more than 1800 vehicles and 150,000 people. In its construction, 15.1 million dollars were spent and 27 people died. The bridge is built with limestone , granite and cement . Its architectural style is neo-gothic , with its characteristic pointed arches in the two lateral towers. Although at the time it was built no aerodynamic tests were carried out on the bridges (this technique only began to be used in the fifties of the twentieth century), the open structure of the bridge prevented stability problems due to the wind. In addition, Roebling had calculated that with the metallic cable supports the bridge was six times more resistant than strictly necessary, which explains why it still stands when a large part of the hanging bridges built at the same time do not