The Brooklyn Bridge and Emily

Imagine the Brooklyn bridge being famous because a rooster was one of the first to cross! When the Brooklyn Bridge was completed after fourteen years of construction, the first to cross was Emily Warren Roebling by carriage. She carried a live rooster as a sign of victory.

So why did Emily Roebling carry a rooster across the Brooklyn Bridge? Emily considered that moment of being the first person to cross the bridge as her ‘Ruby Shoe Moment.’ She laughed as “she looked down at the white rooster in her lap. She was riding across the Brooklyn Bridge – the first person to ever do. The rooster was a traditional symbol of victory, but she just hoped it didn't peck her or try to get out of the open-air carriage!”

Emily Warren was born in Cold Spring, New York on September 23, 1843. As a teenager, she attended the Georgetown Academy of the Visitation in Washington, DC, where she studied history, astronomy, and algebra, among needlework and housekeeping.

“In 1864, she met her future husband, Washington, who was serving as an engineering officer on the staff of her brother, General G. K. Warren, during the Civil War. Washington was the son of John Roebling, an eminent German-American civil engineer who was in the process of designing what he called "the greatest bridge in existence" — the future Brooklyn Bridge.”

The couple were married in 1865, and soon left for Europe to study caissons, the watertight structures filled with compressed air that would allow workers to dig under the East River and plant the bridge's footings. They returned to America in 1868, just before John Roebling died.

John A. Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge, but died of tetanus in 1869, following an accident at the bridge site. His son, Washington Roebling was then assigned as chief engineer of the bridge's construction.

As he immersed himself in the project, Washington developed decompression sickness, which was known at the time as "caisson disease", by going to underwater depths to study the placement of caissons and not rising at the proper speed. He soon was unable to carry out his duties as he became severely debilitated and bedridden due to decompression sickness.

Emily then stepped in to become the first female field engineer in history and supervised the bridge's construction for over ten years until it was successfully completed. Her husband, Washington, however, was still the chief engineer during construction.

As the only person to visit her husband during his sickness, Emily Roebling relayed information from Washington to his assistants and reported to him the progress of work on the bridge. “She developed an extensive knowledge of strength of materials, stress analysis, cable construction, and calculating catenary curves through Washington's teachings. She complemented her knowledge by her prior interest in and study of the bridge's construction when her husband had been appointed as chief engineer.”

Emily became dedicated to the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge. She “dealt with politicians, competing engineers, and all those associated with work on the bridge, to the point where people believed she was behind the bridge's design.”

As the New York Times reported at the time, “Mrs. Roebling applied herself to the study of engineering, and she succeeded so well that in a short time she was able to assume the duties of chief engineer."

In 1882, Washington's title of chief engineer was in jeopardy because of his extended illness. To allow him to retain his position, Emily lobbied for him in meetings with engineers and politicians to defend her husband's work. To the Roeblings' relief, the politicians responded well and permitted Washington to remain chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883. At the opening ceremony, U.S. Congressman Abram Stevens Hewitt saluted her in a speech: "The name of Emily Warren Roebling will... be inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature and all that is wonderful in the constructive world of art." He proclaimed, that the Brooklyn Bridge would be "an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred."

Over the course of the bridge's construction, over one hundred workers were killed or left severely impaired by the decompression sickness, including Washington, who eventually became partially paralyzed, blind, deaf and mute. Unfortunately, a tragedy occurred almost immediately after the bridge’s opening. On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a woman falling down a stairway at the Brooklyn approach caused a stampede which resulted in at least twelve people being crushed and killed. In subsequent lawsuits, the Brooklyn Bridge Company was acquitted of negligence.

After the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, Emily devoted herself to many women's and humanitarian causes, and wrote an award-winning essay, ‘A Wife's Disabilities’. The essay criticized the laws that discriminated against women. She traveled widely, and fulfilled her dream of receiving a law certificate from New York University in 1899. In the years following the Brooklyn Bridge's construction, her contributions were largely forgotten, as most historians focused on the accomplishments of her husband or father-in-law.

In recent years her role as de facto chief engineer has received recognition, and, “based on a letter to her son that she wrote in 1898, Roebling herself never doubted how essential she was to its success: "I have more brains, common sense and know-how generally than have any two engineers, civil or uncivil, and but for me the Brooklyn Bridge would never have had the name Roebling in any way connected with it!"

While few remember her name, a plaque still stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, dedicating it to the memory of her father-in-law, her husband — and Emily Roebling herself.

Why is Brooklyn Bridge so famous? Considered a brilliant feat of 19th-century engineering, the Brooklyn Bridge was a bridge of many firsts. It was the first suspension bridge to use steel for its cable wire. It was the first bridge to use explosives in a dangerous underwater device called a caisson. And the first to have Emily in charge of building it.

And now it is the first month of the year to enjoy all that we have!