1. A STUDY IN GREAT NESS BY, BHAVIK SHAH, SOLANKI DIGVIJAY,
SHAH YASH.
2. Overview of the bridge Features of the bridge History
Construction Loadings-PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICULER ACCESS Notable
Incidents Images Video
3. Brooklyn Bridge Carries Motor vehicles (cars only) Elevated
trains (until 1944) Streetcars (until 1950) Pedestrians and
bicycles Crosses East River Locale New York City
(ManhattanBrooklyn) Maintained by New York City Department of
Transportation Designer John Augustus Roebling Design
Suspension/Cable-stay Hybrid
4. Total length 5,989 feet (1825 m) Width 85 feet (26 m) Height
276.5 ft(84.3 m) above mean high water Longest span 1,595 feet 6
inches (486.3 m) Clearance below 135 feet (41 m) at mid-span Opened
May 24, 1883; 130 years ago Toll Free both ways Daily traffic
123,781 (2008) Coordinates 40.70569N 73.99639W
5. The Brooklyn Bridge is a bridge in New York City and is one
of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in
1883, it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by
spanning the East River. With a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3
m), it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its
opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge. It
was one of the oldest bridge in the world having a life time of 130
year.
6. Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge
and as the East River Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a
name from an earlier January 25, 1867, letter to the editor of the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government
in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an icon of New York City,
and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and a
National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972. John Augustus
Roebling
7. The Brooklyn Bridge was initially designed by German
immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously designed and
constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware
Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, Waco Suspension Bridge in
Waco, Texas, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in
Cincinnati, Ohio. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and
150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between
Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to
cross the bridge. The bridge's main span over the East River is
1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost $15.5 million to
build and an estimated number of 27 people died during its
construction. On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a rumor
that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which was
responsible for at least twelve people being crushed and killed. On
May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the
bridge's stabilitywhile publicizing his famous circus when one of
his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants
over the Brooklyn Bridge.
8. At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the
longest suspension bridge in the world50% longer than any
previously builtand it has become a treasured landmark. The
architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed
arches above the passageways through the stone towers. At the time
the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not
been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the
1950s, well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows
Bridge(Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that
the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less
subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and
truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed
to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when
many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into
history and been replaced.
9. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior
quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd
Haighby the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the
cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that
the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times
as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with
the addition of 250 cables. The bridge was built with numerous
passageways and compartments in its anchorage. One compartment on
the Manhattan side was famously used to store champagne and wine
for a local dealer because of the consistent temperatures the space
provided. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in
the 1972 book The Great Bridge by David McCullough and Brooklyn
Bridge (1981), the first PBS documentary film ever made by Ken
Burns.
10. The bridge originally carried horse-drawn and rail traffic,
with a separate elevated walkway along the centerline for
pedestrians and bicycles. Since 1950, the main roadway has carried
six lanes of automobile traffic. Due to the roadway's height (11 ft
(3.4 m) posted) and weight 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) posted)
restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from
using this bridge. Streetcars ran on what are now the two center
lanes (shared with other traffic) until the elevated lines stopped
using the bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center
tracks. In 1950 the streetcars also stopped running, and the bridge
was rebuilt to carry six lanes of automobile traffic.
11. The Brooklyn Bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway open to
walkers and cyclists, in the center of the bridge and higher than
the automobile lanes. In 1971, a center line was painted to
separate cyclists from pedestrians, creating one of the City's
first dedicated bike lanes.
12. More than 4,000 pedestrians and 3,100 cyclists cross the
Brooklyn Bridge each day. While the bridge has always permitted the
passage of pedestrians across its span, its role in allowing
thousands to cross takes on a special importance in times of
difficulty when usual means of crossing the East River have become
unavailable. During transit strikes by the Transport Workers Union
in 1980 and 2005, the bridge was used by people commuting to work,
with Mayors Koch and Bloomberg crossing the bridge as a gesture to
the affected public Following the 1965, 1977 and 2003 blackouts and
most famously after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World
Trade Center, the bridge was used by people leaving Manhattan after
subway service was suspended.
13. Notable jumper The first person to jump from the bridge was
Robert Emmet Odlum, brother of women's rights activist Charlotte
Odlum Smith, on May 19, 1885. He struck the water at an angle and
died shortly thereafter from internal injuries. Steve Brodie was
the most famous jumper or self-proclaimed jumper (in 1886).
Cartoonist Otto Eppers jumped and survived in 1910, and was then
tried and acquitted for attempted suicide. First flight under the
bridge In 1919, Giorgio Pessi piloted what was then the world's
largest airplane, the Caproni Ca.5, under the bridge.
14. 100th anniversary celebrations: The centennial celebrations
on May 24, 1983, saw a cavalcade of cars crossing the bridge, led
by President Ronald Reagan. 125th anniversary celebrations:
Beginning on May 22, 2008, festivities were held over a five- day
period to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the opening of the
Brooklyn Bridge. Just before the anniversary celebrations, the
Telectroscope, which created a video link between New York and
London, was installed on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. The
installation lasted for a few weeks and permitted viewers in New
York to see people looking into a matching telectroscope in front
of London's Tower Bridge. A newly renovated pedestrian connection
to DUMBO was also unveiled before the anniversary
celebrations.
15. On March 1, 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened fire on a
van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish
Movement, striking 16-year-old student Ari Halberstam and three
others traveling on the bridge. Habersham died five days later from
his wounds. Baz was apparently acting out of revenge for the Hebron
massacre of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein that had taken place
days earlier on February 25, 1994
16. Some of the Noteworthy points of the bridge are:- Power and
Grace- Each stage of construction was a huge undertaking. First,
the foundations for the two towers had to be prepared by digging
down into the riverbed to bedrock by means of caissonsthese are
water-tight chambers used in construction under waterwhere men dug
with pick and shovel under primitive conditions of light and
ventilation. As the caissons descended, the masonry towers were
built on top, and their weight helped to sink the caissons deeper.
The towers took six years to complete. As these were under way, the
approaches to the bridge and the anchorages for the cables were
begun. Then came the spinning of the steel cables, strand by
strand, from one anchorage over one tower to the other tower, down
to the other anchorage, and back again, thousands of times over one
and a half years. Then the vertical suspender cables were hung from
the four main cables, crossbeams were attached to the suspenders,
and the roadway deck was laid atop the beams. Many thousands of
people in New York and Brooklyn followed all these stages with avid
interest.
17. Heaviness and Lightness:- The heavy granite towers seem to
arise from earth itself. Yet these massive stone supports have,
carved out within them, the beautiful, soaring pointed arch of the
Gothic cathedral. Through these arches you can see the sky and
stars. Then, there is the delicate web of cablesyet these filaments
are of heavy steel. Their radiation makes for a sense of release;
meanwhile it is they which lift the heavy roadway in its graceful
curve, and have held it aloft these hundred and twenty-five years
and more. We were moved to see that when Roebling drew the
Elevation and Plan for the bridge, he put a waving pennon atop each
stone tower, and drew sailboats below curvetting in the wind. Is
the state of mind making for art both heavier and lighter than that
which is customary? Yes: It is.
18. Determination and Ease, Firmness and Flexibility:- One of
the things we love has to do with the beautiful curve of the
bridge's cables. This curve is called a catenary curve, the natural
one made by gravity when a chain is suspended between two points.
It has been referred to as the lazy catenary curve, and is the one
made by a hammock. These, made by the four main cables have an
effortless ease, and yet each of these cables is capable of
supporting 24,621,780 pounds, or 12,300 tons. The daring thrust of
the roadway, across what was then the widest span bridged by
suspension, is sustained by this effortless curve.
19. Simplicity and Complexity:- The bridge is one grand, simple
object, joining two shores, which we can take in at a glance; yet,
the more we look the richer it becomes. The towers aren't just
monoliths: there are angles, jutting's, thousands of individual
granite blocks, bands of lighter stone, keystones, cornices. The
hundreds of vertical and diagonal suspender cables make varied
geometric patterns of space as hey intersect. The roadway is made
up of thousands of girderscrosswise, lengthwise, up and down, and
diagonal. Then, when you learn that each cable has 19 strands of
wire, and each strand has 278 wires, that there are 14,000 miles of
this wire and that all this was spun in the air, the oneness of
simplicity and complexity makes for a respect for the world and the
human mind that is Tremendous.
