This entrance opens onto one of the great engineering achievements of the nineteenth century, ready for your crossing. When the Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24, 1883, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, its main span of 1,595 feet nearly double the previous record. John Roebling designed it, but he died before construction began when a ferryboat crushed his foot at this spot in 1869.
His son Washington Roebling took over, then was crippled by caisson disease, the bends, from working in the pressurized underwater foundations, and had to direct construction from a Brooklyn window through a telescope while his wife Emily carried orders and learned enough engineering to effectively run the project. The project took fourteen years and killed dozens of workers. Emily Roebling was the first to cross it on opening day.
Walk out onto the wooden pedestrian path where the cables frame the river far below your feet; the granite towers, carved with Gothic arches, look like a medieval cathedral stretched over water.