The Bridge That Took Its Toll

The bridge rises out of lower Manhattan on two stone towers, with cables strung out in long fans. Its walking path runs above the traffic, so Polly could look straight down through the wires at boats below. Finished in eighteen eighty-three, it was the longest bridge of its kind in the world.

Building the towers meant working underwater. Workers sank huge wooden boxes to the riverbed, filled with pressed air to keep the water out, and dug inside by lantern light. Moving back to normal air too fast made gas bubble inside the body. More than a hundred workers got sick this way.

One of those workers was the bridge's own chief engineer. Partly paralyzed, he had to watch the work from a nearby window with a telescope. His wife carried his instructions to the site and learned enough engineering to run it in his place.

A year after it opened, a false rumor caused a stampede that killed a dozen people. So a showman marched twenty-one elephants across the bridge in one line to prove it could hold far more than any crowd. Polly watched from a cable as the last elephant crossed, calm and unhurried.