The growth of population on Long Island has caused various new bridges
and tunnels to be projected for crossing East River. One new bridge is
to cross at Blackwell's Island, with a pier on the island. Another now
nearly completed, and estimated to cost $10,000,000, crosses from
Grand Street to Broadway in Brooklyn. The Long Island Railroad is
arranging to bore a tunnel under East River, to be operated by
electricity, to bring its trains into New York. The East River being
the locality for most of the foreign shipping, the bridges are at high
elevations, the great Brooklyn Bridge, which crosses from City Hall
Park, being one hundred and thirty-five feet above the water. Its
massive piers are among the tallest structures about New York, rising
two hundred and sixty-eight feet. This, the largest suspension bridge
in the world, was begun in 1870 and opened for traffic in 1885. The
piers stand upon caissons sunk into the rocky bed of the river, which
is forty-five feet below the surface on the Brooklyn side and ninety
feet below on the New York side. Their towers carry four sixteen-inch
wire cables that sustain the bridge, which is built eighty-five feet
wide, giving ample accommodation for two railways, two wagon roads
also carrying electric cars, and a wide raised footway in the centre.
The bridge cost nearly $15,000,000, the distance between the piers is
about sixteen hundred feet, and its entire length between the
anchorages of the cables is three thousand four hundred and
seventy-five feet. The cable anchorages are enormous masses, each
containing about thirty-five thousand cubic yards of solid masonry.
The whole length of the bridge and its elaborate approaches is
considerably over a mile. Its projector was John A. Roebling, who died
during the early work, and its builder, his son Washington Roebling,
who caught the dreaded "caisson disease" while superintending labor
under water, and for years afterward an invalid, watched the progress
of the later work from his chamber window on Brooklyn Heights nearby.
The bridge has carried an enormous traffic, taxing its capacity to the
utmost, and its passengers average over a million a week. The view
from its raised footway is one of the most superb sights of New York,
disclosing both cities, and the extensive wharves and commerce of
East River, the Navy Yard just above, and for miles over the
surrounding region and down through the harbor to the distant blue
hills of Staten Island.