I remember Murcutt once asked our studio a question, “why is nyc where it is? There’s hundreds of miles of coastline between boston and Miami, why did settlers choose to settle in its current location?” After struggling for a solution, murcutt provided his theory. “NYC is located where it is because of its connection to Canadian trade routes via the Hudson, its deep water ports, it’s rock foundations ideal for building skyscrapers— all unique geological features formed thousands of years ago. In 1850 only 4000 people lived in Brooklyn.... today there are millions.” Murcutt who taught me to look at geology, to understand the flora and fauna it sponsors... taught me to understand the environment in which we build is an interwoven ecosystem. In that way of understanding how sites form, he taught me nyc can also be seen as an urban ecosystem heavily influenced by geology.
20,000 years ago, NYC was under 2,000 feet of ice during the ice age. The mastodons roamed the land. The ice melted in such a way that the Hudson River formed. Today, despite the crowds, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on foot is a serene experience. Unlike a typical bridge where you would have to walk on a sidewalk at the edge of the bridge next to cars, the pedestrian path of the Brooklyn Bridge is suspended over the vehicular roadway like a catwalk. Above the cars, your view is the spiderweb of suspension cables, the horizon, and the skyline of Manhattan and Brooklyn beyond. (this experience has inspired many paintings and photographs…) At the time of its opening in 1883, the experience of traversing the bridge must’ve been like flying over the water… A typical building in NYC at the time was only 5 stories tall. The pedestrian path and roadway are over a mile long and rise 119 feet above the East River to allow ships to pass underneath, it was the longest suspension bridge at the time of its completion. Its 276 foot masonry towers were the tallest structures in the western hemisphere at its use of steel presaged the the skyscraper and vertical construction of NYC.
20,000 years ago, NYC was under 2,000 feet of ice during the ice age. The mastodons roamed the land. The ice melted in such a way that the Hudson River formed. Today, despite the crowds, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on foot is a serene experience. Unlike a typical bridge where you would have to walk on a sidewalk at the edge of the bridge next to cars, the pedestrian path of the Brooklyn Bridge is suspended over the vehicular roadway like a catwalk. Above the cars, your view is the spiderweb of suspension cables, the horizon, and the skyline of Manhattan and Brooklyn beyond. (this experience has inspired many paintings and photographs…) At the time of its opening in 1883, the experience of traversing the bridge must’ve been like flying over the water… A typical building in NYC at the time was only 5 stories tall. The pedestrian path and roadway are over a mile long and rise 119 feet above the East River to allow ships to pass underneath, it was the longest suspension bridge at the time of its completion. Its 276 foot masonry towers were the tallest structures in the western hemisphere at its use of steel presaged the the skyscraper and vertical construction of NYC.
The designer of the bridge, John Roebling was inspired to design the bridge when he got stuck in a ferry crossing the icy East River. He was a self-made millionaire/inventor immigrant from Germany who had studied architecture in Berlin. Upon the advice of his philosophy teacher, Hegel, he embarked to America. He made his fortune on the portaging canals of Pennsylvania by inventing steel cable (1” thick) to replace the 9” thick hemp cable that was used to pull boats along canals. After the civil war and his wife’s death, he devoted his efforts to designing the Brooklyn Bridge. Within 2 months he had compiled a cost estimate, a structural design, and a proposal of radical new building materials and foundation design. His competition winning entry proposed the novel use of steel as building material. To hold the cables up, Roebling proposed to make 2 large masonry piers in the river supported over caisson foundations (a new structural foundation technique developed a year earlier in Europe, for which he sent his son, Washington Roebling, to Europe to observe).
The Brooklyn Bridge is a poem of tectonic clarity… and architectural ideal rarely attained. Steel has incredible loading capacity in tension. Stone has incredible capacity in compression. Each material is legible and performs an optimized structural role in the span of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a work of art. Jackson Pollock had a good quote that i think applies to the bridge. "new art requires new techniques. New techniques require new art." To ensure the bridge’s stability and durability, John Roebling designed the cables and piers to withstand six times the anticipated structural load, (72,000 tons!)
When John Roebling was surveying the river prior to construction, his foot was crushed by a ferry as it landed on a dock. Roebling died 2 weeks later of tetanus after having his toes amputated. His 32 year old son, Washington who had never been a chief engineer was entrusted with executing the construction. Like the founding fathers who entrusted the new generations to carry out the government outlined by the Constitution, Washington Roebling was thrust into a typical american position to carry out the designs of his father. The work was extremely difficult. Digging the caisson under the water, under pressure was dangerous. Dozens of workers lost their lives in the construction of the bridge. Washington himself surfaced too fast from a caisson and contracted the bends and suffered paralysis and partial blindness 4 years into construction. To complete the last 10 years of construction, Washington would observe construction of the bridge from his bed through the window of his Brooklyn Heights apartment-- his wife Emily functioned as the chief engineer and construction supervisor for the project, deftly navigating the political obstacles to execute the vision of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Brooklyn bridge and Central Park, are the 2 titans of the 1800s that shaped the course of nyc. To me they both serve as reminders of the power of the human spirit to shape the world from the stuff of our dreams.
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