Series. So id like to thank quay and devon who currently run the program here and remind you there are several more coming up in july and august. The next is powerhouse arena with sarah girard and hannah tente speaking. A little bit about this book and about erica wagner. As you can tell from the backdrop here, this is a great topic for this setting in Brooklyn Bridge park. You know, not most great monuments dont have, dont inspire great writing, but i would say the Brooklyn Bridge is an exception to all of that. You know, from hart crane, you know, to many other poets and writers and notably to the nonfiction writer David Mccullough, there have been really inspired writing on this subject. And err can ca wagner is right up there erica wagner is right up there. What shes done with this biography of Washington Roebling is even remind everyone how even though she was the son of he was the son of a designer, he was the person along with his wife who got it through, you know, a dozen or so years to the end. And it was only its coming up, i think, on 150 years ago when his father die just up here in the heights behind you. And the young 32yearold took over and brilliantly brought it to life. A little bit about erica. You know, shes written on many different topics. We were just talking about her notable book about ted hughes and sylvia platte. She is a new yorker by birth and has been a critic and a literary editor. Hes currently at harpers baa sa in the u. K. Harpersharpers bazaar in t. We are very pleased that she has come over from england to speak to us today, and i hope youll all give a nice round of applause to erica wagner. [applause] erica wagner, whos a little small, so i might try and is that okay . Can you hear me . Very good. Im going to put this down. Well, thank you so much, peter, and i am really thrill to be here at books beneath the bridge. As peter was saying, its really hard to imagine a better backdrop for my talk this evening. I am never not moved when i look at this view, which perhaps you wont be surprised to hear coming from me, but ill explain to you a little bit why that is. Im going to tell you how i became involved in washingtons story, and im going to tell you a little bit about the building of the bridge, and then ill keep an eye on the time, and then i might realize to you a little bit realize to you a little bit read to you a little bit from the book itself. I carry a picture of Washington Roebling in my wallet. The man who built the Brooklyn Bridge, as it says on the cover of my book. But not just any picture. The one ive kept with me since i was 19 years old. In case youre wondering, im 49 now. Its a photograph taken in 1861 when washington, at the age of 24, had just joined the union army. So when i was still a teenager, i photocopied it from a book in the new york public library. I covered it with stuck sticky tape to protect it, and i made a little envelope to keep it even safer. I wrote w. A. R. On that little envelope, washingtons initials. His middle name was augustus, and as it happens my full name is era augusta wagner, so make what you will of that. A strange story perhaps, so i will elaborate somewhat. I grew up across the river on the upper west side. I have to anytime that i never set admit that i never set foot on the Brooklyn Bridge until i was a teenager. I got myself a boyfriend; a young, english civil engineer. He came to visit me in new york one winter. But in truth, i think it wasnt really me he wanted to visit. Be it was the Brooklyn Bridge. And so we walked on the promenade together, and like so many before and so many since, i was struck with wonder by the bridge. And it was no bad thing that i had someone with me who could explain to me how it really worked. The boyfriend did what boyfriends do, he disapur disappeared. But there you go. However, my fascination with the bridge remained. How did it get there . Who made it . I began to read all i could about it, and that is how i met washington. I read hamilton schuylers early biography of the ro to roeblings, i realize newspaper arms and finally the gripping and shocking biography washington wrote of his father, john a. Roebling. I heard washingtons voice as clear as a bell inside my head, erasing the mere century that separated us. I am and always have been a writer. I have never been an engineer. Washington spoke to me as one writer to another. It seemed to me that he wanted me to speak for him. On the cover of chief engineer there is a different photograph of washington, one taken in 1864 not long before he left the army after four years hard fighting in the american civil war. One of the most dreadful conflicts the world has ever seen. But that war was only one of the many challenges this extraordinary man would face, a man who was born in 1867 on in 1837 on the frontier and who died in 1926 in the jazz age. His life was a life that spanned an american century. He was a man who made an american icon, a bridge that has not only serve new yorks served new yorks commuters and tourists and lovers for nearly a century and a half, but has inspired poets and painters and photographers from hart crane to georgia okeefe to walker percy. But who was this man . Why do i care about him so muchsome i want to show you. I want you to care too. So i need you to know what an unprecedented feat of engineering the Brooklyn Bridge was. The first suspension bridge with cables made of steel. A bridge with a span that would not be significantly surpassed for 50 years, not until the building of the George Washington bridge. And a bridge built using a dangerous new technology, one that washington pioneered at great cost to himself. He had taken over the project after the death of his father, John Roebling, a famous engineer who had bridged the knew ago a rah falls and the ohio river in cincinnati. At that time, many people thought to bridge the east river was impossible, but if anyone should be the man to accomplish the feat, well, John Roebling was that man. And then one day in the summer of 1869 before any real work had been started, before very many plans had been made, John Roebling had what seemed to be a minor accident just over there, down by the river. Before two weeks had passed, he was dead. A horrible death from tetanus. And it was left to his son to take over the work. Washington had built bridges for the army during the war. He had supervised the work on his fathers ohio bridge. Yet for all of his expertise, he had been his fathers lieutenant. But now John Roebling was no more. The bridges great towers, their gothic silhouettes recognizable all over the world are set on foundations deep beneath the east river. Those foundations were sunk using caseons, huge chambers set on the rivers bed. Inside these chambers, hundreds of men dug out sand and stone while blocks of granite and limestone built the great tower above. A caseon is launched like a ship from a dock, an upside down ship. It is towed to its correct position in the river and then sunk to settle on the mud bethe surface of the water. Beneath the surface of the water. There were shafts to let in men and material and to bring waste material up as the men head down towards the bedrock far below. The caseon is made offed wood. Its roof layer upon layer of dense pitch pine. There were shaft, too, to pump compressed air into the chamber. Its the compressedded air which keeps the river out. Whats it like to work in come press air . Its like deep sea diving. Come up too fast from the dense atmosphere, and you get very sick, indeed. In the 21st century, this is called decompression sickness, but in the 19th century when thanks to projects such as the building of the Brooklyn Bridge its symptoms began to appear, it was called caseon disease. Getting the bends, some people say is. Nitrogen bubbles in the blood causing a nicing pain, paralysis agonizing pain, paralysis and sometimes death. But that was only one of the dangers faced in this great work. The roof of this caseon remember was made of wood. And one day in 1870 deep underwater the wooden roof of the caseon caught fire. In the roebling archives at washingtons alma mater is a remarkable document. It is a note written first in pencil, then crossed out and rewritten in ink in a hand that is still almost completely ledge jill de legible, despite the passage of time. Accident is beheading, and it begins with one word, fire. Throughout his life Washington Roebling would write on any available scrap of paper; on the back of old stationery, on old bill, on a random slips. Evidence of the need to keep every detail in miss mind. It reads now almost like a kind of urgent poetry. Several small fires, leaks in seams, a caulking of [inaudible] catches easily. Some easily put out. Had to flood caseon. Danger of doing i. Increased caution. Water pipes, hose, steam hose from outside. Fire on night of december 1st. Candle pointing with cement, bad place would not be seen. Burnt appearance. Loving coals, no smoke. Risks. Ultimate decision. 1,350,000 gallons of water, fire not out until roof reached. On the timber roof of the caseon, the tower would rest. If the towers were to fail, all would fail. Everything could have been lost thanks to a moments carelessness. Washington carefully considered what had caused the blaze. The immediate cause of the fire must be owing to a candle held in the right hand of the man who had his coat or dinner in a candle box which was nailed up over the door close to the roof, he surmised. He could only reach the box by stepping up on a frame brace when he would hold a candle with his right hand and reach into the box with his left. He must have held the candle there at least a minute, washington wrote. The man, the Brooklyn Eagle reported, was called mcdonald. Once he had seen the hole burn through the wood, he filled it with plaster to conceal his blunder. He soon disappeared, the paper wrote, and has not been seen sense. But many seen since. But in the oxygenrich atmosphere, the wood kept burning. Living coals, as washington described them. Buckets of water with, Carbon Dioxide from fire extinguishers had no effect. A desperate remedy had to be try. There was nothing for it but to flood the caseon from above. But such a plan was more than just risky. If the air should all be out before the water had reach the roof, the result would be a sudden drop of the caseon, and the destruction of all supports by the weight of 28,000 tons besides running the risk of causing the caseon to leak so badly at to render as to render reinflation impossible. Washington had never been a man to stay at his desk. The chief engineer was 33 years old now. He was down at the worksite, down in the caseon as much or more as anyone who worked for him. But now the hard work, and more crucially, the weight of responsibility began to take its toll on washington. He had a team of assistants you should him, but a under him, but a decision such as this was his alone. All these considerations had to be carefully weighed, and the risks looked at from both sides before giving the order to flood the caseon. There was no intelligent mind to consult with as all of my assistants make it a point to live three miles away from this work so as not to be on hand in case of an emergency, he wrote with not a little bitterness. In the meantime, i had been down in the caseon for seven hours and began to experience that peculiar numb feel anything the small of the back and lower limbs which precedes paralysis. Fire boats were called. 1,350,000 gallons of water were poured down through the caseon shafts, and the caseon remained flooded for two and a half days. It settled by only two inches. When the water was eventually pushed out, the damage had to be painstakingly repaired, work of months. P eleven courses of timber had been damaged, more pine was forced into the breaches, and iron straps were bolted to the chambers roof. After those seven hours down in the caseon, washington had to be taken home and rubbed for an hour on the spine with salt and whiskey. He had try to rest, but at any moment expected to hear the doorbell ring with a message that the caseon was burning yet. He recovered enough, clearly, to write up his notes. Whether it was the salt and whiskey which did the trick or simply being away from the caseon, we dont know. We dont know if his wife emily tended to him or how much he would have seen of his 3yearold son. What we can know is that nothing stopped him from his task. Every day brought new challenges and new uncertainties. Washington roebling might call all this simply doing his job. But considering the strength of mind and feeling required to do that job is what draws us back to a room and a house in brooklyn heights, a room scented with smoke and whiskey to find washington back at his desk. There was still no end of solutions to be found. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge took 14 years. During those years, washingtons health continued to worsen. The manner in which emily ro to ebling came to the aid of her husband in the time of his illness is an astonishing story in itself. When the bridge finally opened in may 1883, there was a celebration such as the cities of new york and brooklyn had never seen and perhaps have never seen from that day to this. But this remarkable story is only part of Washington Roeblings remarkable life. In order to trace that life, i spent hours in the archives of rpi and Rutgers University i leafed through washingtons college notes. Belief me, you can be glad you didnt go to rpi in the 1850s. I read his love letters, i read his words in praise of his beloved old dog, billy sunday. I traveled to the pretty little town in western pennsylvania where washington i grew up and which remains, astonishingly, pretty much as it was when John Roebling built it in the 1830s. I walked across the ohio river and on the battlefield at gettysburg. I went to Cold Springs Cemetery where washington and emily are buried. On her gravestone he had three words inscribed, gifted, noble, true. It has been a wonderful journey. I have built my own bridge, i hope, from the past to the present day. Has been my companion for three decades because i am inspired by his tenacity, by the strength of his spirit. If a problem was put in front of him, he would not rest until it was solved. His life was, in many ways, a privileged one, but it was also one marked by brutality and scarred by wars of more than one kind. Nevertheless, he persisted always. When i have felt discouraged, he has given me courage. When i want to give up, he helps me to go on. I know that nothing can be done perfectly at the first trial, he once wrote. I also know that each day brings its little quota of experiences which, with honest intentions, will lead to perfection after a while. So thats just a little bit about how this remarkable structure came to be built all those years ago, a structure that has endured with some but not much alteration from that day to this. I thought id read you, too, a little bit from the book. As i mentioned in my talk, emily roebling, washingtons wife, was a truly remarkable woman. When he became very ill in the 1870s, the episode that i just read to you was the beginning of his sickness. He got much, much sicker after that. In 1873 and 1875, he really thought that he would die. He didnt die. He remain in control of the bridge. But emily was his extraordinary assistant. Helping him, going down to the bridge site to consult with the other engineers, talking to the trustees, doing all the kind of complicated politics that washington actually really didnt like anyway himself and probably wouldnt have been particularly good at. And she was an astonishing woman in her own right. And he met her during the civil war, which is also a fascinating period in washingtons life. So i thought i would tell you a little bit about their, about their meeting. So they met not long after the battle of gettysburg. That was in july of 1863. In very late november and early december 1863 in orange county, virginia, general mead made an attempt to strike at the right flank of the confederate army. But the field fortifications that lee had prepared in the Little Valley at mine run prove a match for the union army as washington himself along with general warren, his Commanding Officer discovered personally. At break of dawn by light of the moon, warren and i crawled on our knees close up to lees works, found to them fully manned, high and strong, built the year before. No assault could have succeeded. 10,000 men would have been slaughteredded. Mine run was lost the day before when the works were unoccupied and we could have walked in but waited for nothing. Despite the mud and the slaughter, some diversion was to be found. On february 22nd, 1864, Washington Roebling found himself invited to a ball. You know the third corps had a a ball some six weeks since, and the second was determined to put that ball into the shade entirely, he wrote four days later to his sister, elvira, his closest confidant in such matters. The evening was, as far as washington was concerned, a spectacular success. Our supper cost 1500 and was furnished by party miss washington. In washington. The most prominent ladies of washington were present from ms. Hamlin, daughter of the Vice President , kate chase the strikingly beautiful daughter of lincolns treasury secretary. Its perhaps interesting to think about powerful government daughters right now. Im just dropping that in there. And the mrs. Hale downs, the daughters of the senator from new hampshire. But these women were not the reason for washingtons letter to his sister. Haas but not least was miss emily warren, the sister of the general who came specially from west point to attend the ball. It was the first time i ever saw her, and i am very much of the opinion that she has capture your brothers heart at last. It was a real attack in force. It came without any warning or any previous realization on my part of such an occurrence taking place and it was, therefore, all the more successful. And i ashower you that it gives assure you that it gives me the greatest pleasure to say that i have succumbed. What they said to each other that night, with the way they danced, what she was wearing, the bloodstream of the cand