Strohmeyer & Wyman/Library of CongressPedestrians walk across the Brooklyn Bridge’s promenade in 1899, 16 years after the bridge opened.

On May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn with Manhattan, was opened to traffic with a celebration attended by President Chester A. Arthur, Gov. Grover Cleveland of New York, and Emily Roebling, the wife of the bridge’s main engineer, Washington Roebling.

The May 25 New York Times reported, “The pleasant weather brought visitors by the thousands from all around. … It is estimated that over 50,000 people came in by the railroads alone, and swarms by the sound boats and by the ferry-boats helped to swell the crowds in both cities. … The opening of the bridge was decidedly Brooklyn’s celebration. New York’s participation in it was meager, save as to the crowd which thronged her streets.”

The bridge took 13 years to construct at a cost of $15 million. German immigrant John A. Roebling drafted original plans for the bridge, but he died in an accident a year before construction began. His son, Washington, took over the project and worked alongside laborers in underwater chambers known as caissons. He, like many of the workers, became ill with “caissons disease,” a disease now known as decompression sickness or “the bends,” which occurs when one returns to the surface after spending time underwater. The disease forced Roebling to take leave from the project in 1872 and oversee the remainder of the construction from his home, with his wife serving as a liaison between him and the construction crew.
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