One of the oldest and the best Suspension Bridge created by man kind. It is one of the heavily used bridge in US.

1. A STUDY IN GREAT NESS
BY,
BHAVIK SHAH,
SOLANKI DIGVIJAY,
SHAH YASH.

2. Overview of the bridge
Features of the bridge
History
Construction
Loadings-PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICULER ACCESS
Notable Incidents
Images
Video

3. Brooklyn Bridge
Carries Motor vehicles (cars only)
Elevated trains (until 1944)
Streetcars (until 1950)
Pedestrians and bicycles
Crosses East River
Locale New York City (Manhattan–Brooklyn)
Maintained by New York City Department of Transportation
Designer John Augustus Roebling
Design Suspension/Cable-stay Hybrid

4. Total length 5,989 feet (1825 m)
Width 85 feet (26 m)
Height 276.5 ft(84.3 m) above mean high water
Longest span 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m)
Clearance below 135 feet (41 m) at mid-span
Opened May 24, 1883; 130 years ago
Toll Free both ways
Daily traffic 123,781 (2008)
Coordinates 40.70569°N 73.99639°W

5.  The Brooklyn Bridge is a bridge in New York City and is one of the
oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883,
it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning
the East River.
 With a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m), it was the longest
suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the
first steel-wire suspension bridge.
 It was one of the oldest bridge in the world having a life time of 130
year.

6.  Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn
Bridge and as the East River Bridge, it was dubbed the
Brooklyn Bridge, a name from an earlier January 25,
1867, letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and
formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since
its opening, it has become an icon of New York City, and
was designated a National Historic Landmark in
1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering
Landmark in 1972.
John Augustus Roebling

8.  The Brooklyn Bridge was initially designed by German
immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously
designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such
as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen,
Pennsylvania, Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, and
the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio.
 On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people
crossed what was then the only land passage between
Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to
cross the bridge. The bridge's main span over the East River is
1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost $15.5 million to
build and an estimated number of 27 people died during its
construction.
 On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a rumor that the
Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which was
responsible for at least twelve people being crushed and killed.
On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about
the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus when
one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21
elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.

9.  At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the longest
suspension bridge in the world—50% longer than any
previously built—and it has become a treasured landmark.
 The architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic
pointed arches above the passageways through the stone
towers.
 At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge
building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested
in wind tunnels until the 1950s, well after the collapse of the
original Tacoma Narrows Bridge(Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It
is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting
the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic
problems.
 Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six
times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this,
the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges
built around the same time have vanished into history and
been replaced.

10.  This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality
wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd
Haigh—by the time it was discovered, it was too late to
replace the cabling that had already been constructed.
Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the
bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary,
so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of
250 cables.
 The bridge was built with numerous passageways and
compartments in its anchorage. One compartment on the
Manhattan side was famously used to store champagne
and wine for a local dealer because of the consistent
temperatures the space provided.
 The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in the
1972 book The Great Bridge by David
McCullough and Brooklyn Bridge (1981), the first
PBS documentary film ever made by Ken Burns.

11.  The bridge originally carried horse-drawn and rail traffic, with a
separate elevated walkway along the centerline for
pedestrians and bicycles.
 Since 1950, the main roadway has carried six lanes of
automobile traffic. Due to the roadway's height (11 ft (3.4 m)
posted) and weight 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) posted) restrictions,
commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using this
bridge.
 Streetcars ran on what are now the two center lanes (shared
with other traffic) until the elevated lines stopped using the
bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center
tracks. In 1950 the streetcars also stopped running, and the
bridge was rebuilt to carry six lanes of automobile traffic.

12.  The Brooklyn Bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway
open to walkers and cyclists, in the center of the bridge
and higher than the automobile lanes. In 1971, a center
line was painted to separate cyclists from pedestrians,
creating one of the City's first dedicated bike lanes.

13.  More than 4,000 pedestrians and 3,100 cyclists cross the
Brooklyn Bridge each day. While the bridge has always
permitted the passage of pedestrians across its span, its
role in allowing thousands to cross takes on a special
importance in times of difficulty when usual means of
crossing the East River have become unavailable.
 During transit strikes by the Transport Workers
Union in 1980 and 2005, the bridge was used by people
commuting to work, with
Mayors Koch and Bloomberg crossing the bridge as a
gesture to the affected public Following
the 1965, 1977 and 2003 blackouts and most famously
after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center, the bridge was used by people leaving
Manhattan after subway service was suspended.

14.  Notable jumper
 The first person to jump from the bridge was Robert Emmet
Odlum, brother of women's rights activist Charlotte Odlum
Smith, on May 19, 1885. He struck the water at an angle
and died shortly thereafter from internal injuries. Steve
Brodie was the most famous jumper or self-proclaimed
jumper (in 1886). Cartoonist Otto Eppers jumped and
survived in 1910, and was then tried and acquitted for
attempted suicide.
 First flight under the bridge
 In 1919, Giorgio Pessi piloted what was then the world's largest
airplane, the Caproni Ca.5, under the bridge.

15. 100th anniversary celebrations:
 The centennial celebrations on May 24, 1983, saw a
cavalcade of cars crossing the bridge, led by President Ronald
Reagan.
 125th anniversary celebrations:
 Beginning on May 22, 2008, festivities were held over a five-
day period to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the opening
of the Brooklyn Bridge.
 Just before the anniversary celebrations, the Telectroscope,
which created a video link between New York and London,
was installed on the Brooklyn side of the bridge.
The installation lasted for a few weeks and permitted viewers
in New York to see people looking into a matching
telectroscope in front of London's Tower Bridge. A newly
renovated pedestrian connection to DUMBO was also
unveiled before the anniversary celebrations.

16.  On March 1, 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened
fire on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch
Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking 16-year-old
student Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the
bridge. Habersham died five days later from his wounds.
Baz was apparently acting out of revenge for the Hebron
massacre of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein that had
taken place days earlier on February 25, 1994

17.  Some of the Noteworthy points of the bridge are:-
 Power and Grace-
 Each stage of construction was a huge undertaking. First, the foundations
for the two towers had to be prepared by digging down into the riverbed to
bedrock by means of caissons—these are water-tight chambers used in
construction under water—where men dug with pick and shovel under
primitive conditions of light and ventilation. As the caissons descended, the
masonry towers were built on top, and their weight helped to sink the
caissons deeper.
 The towers took six years to complete. As these were under way, the
approaches to the bridge and the anchorages for the cables were begun.
Then came the spinning of the steel cables, strand by strand, from one
anchorage over one tower to the other tower, down to the other anchorage,
and back again, thousands of times over one and a half years. Then the
vertical suspender cables were hung from the four main cables, crossbeams
were attached to the suspenders, and the roadway deck was laid atop the
beams. Many thousands of people in New York and Brooklyn followed all
these stages with avid interest.

18.  Heaviness and Lightness:-
 The heavy granite towers seem to arise from earth itself. Yet
these massive stone supports have, carved out within them,
the beautiful, soaring pointed arch of the Gothic cathedral.
Through these arches you can see the sky and stars. Then,
there is the delicate web of cables—yet these filaments are of
heavy steel. Their radiation makes for a sense of release;
meanwhile it is they which lift the heavy roadway in its graceful
curve, and have held it aloft these hundred and twenty-five
years and more. We were moved to see that when Roebling
drew the Elevation and Plan for the bridge, he put a waving
pennon atop each stone tower, and drew
sailboats below curvetting in the wind. “Is the state of mind
making for art both heavier and lighter than that which is
customary?” Yes: It is.

19.  Determination and Ease, Firmness and Flexibility:-
 One of the things we love has to do with the beautiful
curve of the bridge's cables. This curve is called a
catenary curve, the natural one made by gravity when a
chain is suspended between two points. It has been
referred to as the “lazy catenary curve,” and is the one
made by a hammock. These, made by the four main
cables have an effortless ease, and yet each of these
cables is capable of supporting 24,621,780 pounds, or
12,300 tons. The daring thrust of the roadway, across
what was then the widest span bridged by suspension, is
sustained by this effortless curve.

20.  Simplicity and Complexity:-
 The bridge is one grand, simple object, joining two shores, which
we can take in at a glance; yet, the more we look the richer it
becomes. The towers aren't just monoliths: there are angles,
jutting's, thousands of individual granite blocks, bands of lighter
stone, keystones, cornices. The hundreds of vertical and
diagonal suspender cables make varied geometric patterns of
space as hey intersect. The roadway is made up of thousands of
girders—crosswise, lengthwise, up and down, and diagonal.
Then, when you learn that each cable has 19 strands of wire, and
each strand has 278 wires, that there are 14,000 miles of this
wire and that all this was spun in the air, the oneness of simplicity
and complexity makes for a respect for the world and the human
mind that is Tremendous.

23. By – Bhavik Shah,
Digvijay Solanki,
Yash Shah.