Brooklyn Bridge ( The cursed Bridge ) Part-2

The construction of Brooklyn Bridge was a perilous process.

 In order to achieve a solid foundation for the bridge, workers excavated the riverbed in massive wooden boxes called caissons. These airtight chambers were pinned to the river’s floor by enormous granite blocks; pressurized air was pumped in to keep water and debris out. Workers known as “sandhogs”—many of them immigrants earning about $2 a day—used shovels and dynamite to clear away the mud and boulders at the bottom of the river. Each week, the caissons inched closer to the bedrock. When they reached a sufficient depth—44 feet on the Brooklyn side and 78 feet on the Manhattan side—they began backfilling the caisson with poured concrete and brick piers, working their way back up to the surface.          

Underwater, the workers in the caisson were uncomfortable—the hot, dense air gave them blinding headaches, itchy skin, bloody noses and slowed heartbeats—but relatively safe. The journey to and from the depths of the East River, however, could be deadly. To get down into the caissons, the sandhogs rode in small iron containers called airlocks. As the airlock descended into the river, it filled with compressed air. This air made it possible to breathe in the caisson and kept the water from seeping in, but it also dissolved a dangerous amount of gas into the workers’ bloodstreams. When the workers resurfaced, the dissolved gases in their blood were quickly released.                  

This often caused a constellation of painful symptoms known as “caisson disease” or “the bends”: excruciating joint pain, paralysis, convulsions, numbness, speech impediments and, in some cases, death. More than 100 workers suffered from the disease, including Washington Roebling himself, who remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life and was forced to watch his wife Emily take charge of the bridge’s construction`

On 24 May 1883 the construction of the bridge was finally finished and Emily Roebling was the first to cross the bridge on the request of her husband. She rode on a carriage from the Brooklyn side to the Manhattan side, carrying a rooster on her lap as a symbol of victory. Within 24 hours, over 1,00,000 people crossed the bridge.

One day, a woman slips, panics and shouts ‘the bridge is collapsing!’ This scream frightened everyone resulting in a jam where 12 people died and several people were injured. Several people attempted suicide during the initial years of the bridge and unfortunately some of these attempts were successful. Several such incidents made people think that Brooklyn Bridge had a curse.

Later, on May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum led 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge to prove that it was stable.

An interesting fact about Brooklyn Bridge is the Manhattan anchorage featuring a bronze plaque commemorating the land below as the former location of the country’s first presidential mansion. The Lower Manhattan mansion served as the home of George Washington during his first ten months as America’s Commander-in-Chief.

                                                

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