FEATURE image: The Brooklyn Bridge. Centered perfectly is one of the bridge’s massive, Gothic-arched granite suspension towers, while flanking the right side behind the suspension cables are the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, including the recognizable Verizon communications building. August 2005. Author’s photograph. All rights reserved.

The Brooklyn Bridge over the East River is the oldest extant bridge in New York City—a city of bridges—and is also the city’s most architecturally famous. The opening of the hybrid cable-stayed and suspension bridge in May 1883 has been called “the Dawn of Modern New York” as it is the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge.

Spanning the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, it was designed and built by a father-son team. Construction began in January 1870 after being approved by Congress in 1869 whose concern was that the bridge project would in no way impede free and open navigation. Over the next over 13 years, an estimated 27 men died during the bridge’s construction. The New York terminus rests on bedrock while the Brooklyn terminus rests on clay. Following its opening in 1883 by the end of that year more than one million passengers crossed the bridge.

The total length of the bridge is 6,537 feet—nearly one-and-one-quarter miles. From the middle of the span, it is about 135 feet above the river with the span’s weight around 7,000 tons. The railroad on the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1888. The cables on the bridge are over one foot wide (16 inches) and took almost a year and a half (15 months) to string. Their calibration had to include calculations for variables such as wind and expansion and contraction due to temperature. The height of the Gothic-inspired towers are 159 feet above the roadway.

While a classic yellow New York City taxicab and a white sedan drive ahead, the bridge’s intricate, industrial steel trusses, overhead support beams, and complex web of suspension cables that line both sides of the roadway fill out the view heading from Brooklyn into Manhattan. An average of 103,051 vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge every single day. August 2005. Author’s photograph. All rights reserved.

SOURCES: The Sun, New York, New York, June 11, 1891.
NYC DOT – Brooklyn Bridge – retrieved August 2, 2026.