20 Facts About the BK Bridge

Take a look at this really cool photo history of the Brooklyn Bridge from LIFE magazine! 


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Fact No. 1: The Brooklyn Bridge officially opened to the public on May 24, 1883.



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Fact No. 2: The bridge was originally called the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. It was officially given the name “Brooklyn Bridge” by the city in 1915.



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Fact No. 3: Con man William McCloundy was sentenced to 2 1/2 years at Sing Sing Prison for “selling” the Brooklyn Bridge to a tourist in 1901. Pictured: Jules Munshin, Frank Sinatra, and Gene Kelly use the bridge as a magnificent stage in Stanley Donen’s film, On the Town, in 1949.



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Fact No. 4: When it opened, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world, the first steel-wire suspension bridge, and the first bridge to connect to Long Island.



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Fact No. 5: On its first day open to the public, 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed the span.



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Fact No. 6: On May 30, 1883, a rumor that the bridge was collapsing spread through the crowds on it, causing a stampede. At least 12 people were killed in the ensuing panic.



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Fact No. 7: On May 17, 1884, showman P. T. Barnum led 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge to prove that it was stable. 



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Fact No. 8: For several years after its construction, the Brooklyn Bridge was the tallest structure in the Western hemisphere.



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Fact No. 9: The first person to cross the bridge was Emily Roebling, the wife of Washington Roebling, the engineer who built the bridge and the son of its designer.



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Fact No. 10: Each of the bridge’s four supporting cables is 3,578 feet, 6 inches long and 15 1/2 inches thick, and contains 21,000 wires that, combined, would have a total length of 14,060 miles.

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Fact No. 11: The bridge weighs 14,680 tons, 6,620 tons of it suspended.



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Fact No. 12: The bridge’s cost when it was built was $15.1 million. Pictured: Howard Hughes flies a twin-propeller Lockheed 14 Super Electra past the bridge during his bid to circle the globe in four days.



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Fact No. 13: The bridge is 85 feet wide. and has six lanes of traffic. When it opened, it had a roadway for horses and carriages, an elevated pedestrian walkway, and a trolley line.



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Fact. No. 14: About 78,000 vehicles cross the nearby Manhattan Bridge every weekday. By comparison, an average of 144,000 vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each weekday.



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Fact No. 15: The Brooklyn Bridge’s span measures 1,595 feet, 6 inches. With its approaches, its full length is 6,016 feet.



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Fact No. 16: There are 85,159 cubic yards of masonry in the bridge.



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Fact No. 17: The original toll for crossing the bridge was one penny.



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Fact No. 18: The bridge turned out to be a tragedy for the Roebling family. The designer, John Roebling, died from tetanus after a ferry crushed his foot as he was scouting locations for the bridge. His son, Washington Roebling, of Trenton, N.J., fell prey to the bends from his time in caissons laying the foundations for the towers, and became an invalid. Washington’s wife, Emily, became the de facto head of construction in his stead. 



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Fact No. 19: The bedrock on the Manhattan side turned out to be much deeper than predicted, so the tower on that side of the bridge rests on sand.



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Fact No. 20: The Brooklyn Bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964, after physically joining the island Manhattan and Long Island for 81 years.