Author Erica Wagner, a New York City native, celebrates the story of constructing the Brooklyn Bridge in her book, Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge. Nearly 150 years after being built, the Brooklyn Bridge remains a wonder. Notably, its iconic image is still displayed on tourist brochures, film posters, and even Italian chewing gum wrappers. In fact, many consider the Brooklyn Bridge one of the greatest symbols of 19th-century progress, and how it was made is a dramatic tale of vision, innovation, and endurance in the face of extraordinary odds.

Although she never knew Roebling personally, Wagner, at age sixteen, fell in love with the bridge’s engineer Washington Roebling, carrying his picture in her wallet for decades and even to this day! However, writing his biography, though a great pleasure, required her to understand not only literature but also to become steeped in engineering and history.

When David McCullough published The Great Bridge in the early 1970s, he was surprised no one had written a biography of the great Washington Roebling. Yet, at that time, even McCullough did not have access to the writings of Roebling. Those would not come to light until the early 2000s when they were discovered in the archives of Rutgers University in Trenton, New Jersey, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. So, Wagner, being a lifelong aficionado of Roebling, seized the opportunity to study his memoir, which was very intertwined with the life of his tyrannical father John A. Roebling, the bridge’s designer. Finally, out of Wagner’s intensive research emerged the biography, Chief Engineer.

• Washington Roebling was frustrated all his life by the confusion between himself and his father John Roebling, a great and famous engineer who got the contract to build the Brooklyn Bridge.
• John A. Roebling’s invention of steel wire cables made the family’s fortune and allowed him to build suspension bridges.
• Early in the project, John Roebling had an accident and died 10 days later of tetanus, leaving the mammoth construction project to his son Washington.
• When he became sick with “caisson disease,” Washington and his wife Emily became close business partners by default with Emily acting as his intermediary at the engineering site.
• The original four cables, now over 135-years-old, are still holding up the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Washington Roebling’s great passion was not engineering but was, in fact, geology and mineralogy, and his mineral collection was donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

QUOTES FROM WAGNER

“All of his life, his father’s reputation got in the way of him, and people were always confusing him and his father to his great annoyance.”

“Washington Roebling didn’t have a choice; he was raised to be his father’s lieutenant.”

“Any structure is only as good as the maintenance devoted to it. Infrastructure has to be maintained…you don’t just pay for it once.”

BUY Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge 

RECOMMENDATIONS

• A children's nonfiction book about bridges, complete with illustrations, photos, and historical material: BUY 13 Bridges Children Should Know by Brad Finger
• Our podcast with Brad Finger discussing several children's nonfiction books he has written for Prestel Publishing

Original movies made by Thomas Edison from the train crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

• https://bit.ly/2U1RYaV
• https://bit.ly/2tpMefe

For weekly updates, join our email list!

Follow us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit