Historical society. He is an architectural historian who specializes in European Architecture of the 18th and 20th centuries. He is best known throughout new videohrough a series of walking tour is presented by channel 13 including the Emmy Award Nominated shows 42nd street, broadway and harlem. He has lectured at numerous venues, including columbia university, the Smithsonian Institute and the harvard graduate before we begin we would like to ask everyone to turn off cell phones, electronic beepers, lets give barry lewis a warm welcome. [applause] barry i dont need that. Me, i am all over the stage. It is interesting, i had some people talking to me about this lecture. I am not talking about the Brooklyn Bridge as much as brooklyn. Why brooklyn needed the bridge and more so than that, new york. New york would never ever admit that they needed brooklyn but they needed it. Just in case people were not here, it was a series of three lectures. I did the first one about a month ago. In recouping that, remember that new york becomes the premier city of america by the 1820s and 1830s. 60,000 people in manhattan by 1800, by 1875, 1 Million People on manhattan island. That is called growth. This was an 1860s print of a part of manhattan, a part of new york. Remember, in those days, new york city was strictly an island. You got to the 1860s, the Brooklyn Bridge was going to begin in 1869. The reason it was needed, by the time you get to the late 1860s, downtown the york was the Central Business district of the order. It becomes the Central Business district of america by the 1830s. New york is growing at this time. Unfortunately, manhattan is a long, skinny island. The only way to grow is uptown. By the time you get to the 1860s, the time the Brooklyn Bridge would be built, the middle class people are forced the easts far north as 60s and north 40s. They had to commute down to wall street. The women committed them to the ladies smile. That is the union, Madison Square area. If you had to depend on these courses, they were horrible. An idea of the traffic. Broadway is going off to the left. Look at that backup of horse colors. If you are heading here, that is another three miles. Thought that committing today is awful, it was pretty awful back then. A cartoon ofas what was the busiest intersection of america. One of them was the busiest in the world. That was broadway. There is the u. S. Post office. That is not here today. That stood until 1938. There is probably going up to our tribeca. That is going up to what is today the Brooklyn Bridge. That is the middle of the loop the 1890s. Nobody is going anywhere fast. The problem was that these three systems of our cities could not take all of these people. Everybody is piled onto the street. You had to get people off of the street. One way or another. Weekber, i mentioned last what we call Brooklyn Today is basically kings county, originally, that was six separate towns. They were founded by the dutch, recognized by the english, broke them was only one of those six towns. It was the closest to new york and new york was the epic economic engine in the 1930s. Sure, if you want to live in manhattan, you can live although it uptown in the west 40s and 50s and 60s. If you can live in brooklyn, you are right across from the centrist district. This is important to remember because we all think of wall street as the financial district. All you had to do was cross that river. You would have wonderful neighbors to live in. Acrossknow brooklyn, from the cbd, there were these very fine beginning with Brooklyn Heights. As you fan out from Brooklyn Heights you have carroll gardens, the top end of park. Lope, Prospect Heights these were fine middleclass neighborhoods to serve the aroundwho worked the cbd wall street. In the 1850s, brooklyn annexed williamsburg and the rest of the old town of bushwick. It wound up being across from manhattan from new yorks Lower East Side which was becoming the main immigrant district of the city. The lower eastin side, the densest pact urban district in the world. You would have these immigrants in new york, packed together in these tournaments, looking 10 immense tennements. The immigrants basically came over into williamsburg. It is interesting when williamsburg and bushwick, they called it the eastern edition. I never understood why. They called it the eastern edition and that eastern addition, because of its proximity, the immigrant section of new york, that got the spillover from the Lower East Side from williamsburg and greenpoint. Here is a map of the neighborhood. The spilled over into bushwick, which is what is going on now with the young people. Theylled over spillover into bushwick, into brownsville, over into queens which is where i grew up in woodhaven. We always called the brooklyn line the city line. It is still called that today. This area on the city line. Tenementrea was your packed immigrant area of what became the city of brooklyn. , from them new york cbd you had such fine , middleclass housing for middleclass people who were headed to wall street to their corporate jobs. Just to go over what i went over in the first lecture, the fairy to fulton street, it starts in the 17th century. Now you know youre going to get to brooklyn. Landed. Where the ferry today. It full street Brooklyn Heights is to the left. The moment you come off of the peers you go up to a height. That is Brooklyn Heights. It is a flatland. Area that isstrial fast gentrifying. That is where Brooklyn Bridge park is today. The first fairy was to fulton ferry was to full street. This is the village of brooklyn. It is off on the left. 1830s, it comes down the atlantic avenue of the south side of the village and ends up at the east river. Tothe 1850s they decide develop their property and put in a ferry. From montague street to wall street. Erries running f between each other. They are overrun with people. There was no place to put another one. Here is a 19th century photograph. It took you from sheer over to wall street. Here over to wall street. Here is another view. Looking at montague street it looks so quiet and peaceful. Weekdayhow lovely on a morning. Birds are chirping. Waves are laughing. [inaudible] the commute was awful. The cartoons tell you the truth. The crowds extend practically into the river. Was s like there [inaudible] with what you had to deal every morning. You think you have it hard, but they had it even harder. And sometimes even the east river, Everything Else was going wrong. To get out of work, you are tired and you want to go home. You hope that the ice doesnt break and you fall in. Who knows how thick it is. Place. Ry is frozen in visiting the city at the time, freeze, impeded from going across the east river, he knew he had a better way of doing it, o this fellow john rowe. You never invited him to dinner to tell jokes. He was a brilliant man. He was german by birth. He was an engineer. His philosophy teacher was hagel. He said where you think the future is . World. Ays, the new you he wound up in pennsylvania. A machine thatd created wire rope. Then strands of wire out of steel. Then you got wire rope. They were bundled together and you had a whil wire cable. You could suspend from those cables roadways but also aqueducts for the canals the need to cross the landscape. Absolutely brilliant. When he saw the east river he knew the suspension Bridge Technology that he used, he could adapt it to the Brooklyn Bridge. Bridge wouldooklyn be longer than anything ever built. Here is his print, or a print of what the Brooklyn Bridge would look like. Some people called it the bridge to long island. Others called it the east river bridge. It eventually got the name Brooklyn Bridge. You can see the aqueduct designed in 1849 to bring the canal over the delaware river. That is a river going underneath. Technologyion bridge allow the largest clearance, the widest clearance for both of the delaware river. Reason whye Suspension Technology was used. Today it was a roadway. As ay be closed only pedestrian bridge. I dont know. It was a beautiful structure. Pennsylvania with new york. Bridge is only 500 plus feet long. The Brooklyn Bridge would be a ,ilelong but the central span and that is what counts, is going to be 1600 feet. That is very important. That is why Suspension Technology was used. The east river was a very busy commercial river. It could not be blocked by a huge. In the middle to hold the bridge. With Suspension Technology had the ships to pass under the bridge. Way, wire was used in this bridge. At some point it was not. If you really want to know about the building of the brooklyn thege, it is written in 1980s. At the time the Brooklyn Bridge was 100 years old. Way, it isy the going to be in operation independently until the 1950s. Its going to be used in the George Washington bridge. Spanw bridge has a central that is twice the length of the Brooklyn Bridge. The gw goes from clifton cliff. The Brooklyn Bridge is going from the flat lands to folks streets. It is not taking you to Brooklyn Heights. That is flat lands. The flatland over at south street. It has to be a longer bridge. You notice it comes down to park road. Is taking you from the center of the Central Business district of new york to the heart of the Business District of brooklyn. That is why it was placed where it was placed. Bridge, hefor this and his son are on the dock in brooklyn and they are surveying. A brooklyn ferry came in. Where ittor missed came in. In 10 days he died a very horrible death. In 1869 before the bridge has of thegun he is out picture. The fellow who built the bridge is this guy, washington roebling. He knew that if the roebling name remained in history it would always be associated with John Roebling. Nobody really noticed he was around. He was the guy who actually built the bridge. 60s, he saidhis to a reporter most people think i died in 1869. That is when his father was killed in that accident. On thean amazing job building the bridge within a year of the bridge construction. He takes over from his father. The instruction would become the bridge done under High Pressure. If you go from High Pressure air issurface pressure air, it quite a difference and it causes. Problem if you go to fast it is painful for some people. 28 men died in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a dangerous job. Means this fellow from 1870 to 1883, the bridge is being built, he is basically a semiinvalid. Making [inaudible] whether his binoculars or maybe he had a telescope, he would take up the violin, but he would do all of his drawings as he would see the bridge progressing. They had to be taken to the bridge itself. Who did he choose to do that . His wife. What a fascinating lady she was. She learned basic engineering from her husband shows she could take the drawings to be engineers. At first were not too happy taking orders my woman but she was so confident, she knew so well what she was doing, she had the right manner about her, they came to respect her so much, when the Brooklyn Bridge opened this lady got the honor of driving the first carriage over the Brooklyn Bridge. After it was built she went back to being a housewife. 1930s ofn the early cancer. Her husband basically got better after the bridge opened. I can imagine why he was invalided. Bridges caps on collapsing. Im sure he felt his bridge would never collapse. And yet you never know. In the back of his mind you could see the scenario, traffic goes over it and the whole things falls over. No wonder he was nervous. After the bridge was built, his nerves settled down. He basically got over the medical problems he had. Wife and ranis roebling wire. The factory may still be there. There is a roebling, new jersey. It is dedicated to the roeblings. But he basically winds up running the country. He didnt like the way his grandson was running the company. Major person involved with construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Sick as he was, he ominous died. He is the last of them to survive. Of course there is another character involved. Boss tweed. He was representative of corrupt politics of the day. He tried to noodle his way into the funding of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was at the height of his power. Earlyl from power in the 1870s. Today we have a new view of him. A lot of people say the reformers who hated him wanted immigrants to become nice white protestant yankees. Language care what they spoke. He understood they needed coal and they needed a job. He got both of them for the immigrants. So they gave him their votes. It is interesting, 1876. 100 years after the revolution. You could imagine considering the corruption of politics that went to the white house, maybe they were right, democracies the always know what they are doing. But we survived. We survived tweed, we survived hayes in the white house. The Brooklyn Bridge itself, a very dangerous job. This will become the foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was basically a huge breadbasket, turned upside down, pushed to the bottom of the er, then inside of the they pumped in highpressure air. The men are all working with highpressure air. At the end of the job, they then would go to a decompression to, spend five minutes and it, and then they would be on the surface. They wanted to get home to their families. They were tired. , on the left you see one of the guys climbing into a decompression chamber. He wont be spending enough time there. These guys, probably the immigrants that tweet got his votes from. They were lucky because in 1873 the stock market crashed. These guys had jobs. In the middle of depression, the best thing is to have a job big project like a dam. , he iss guy is working lighting a gaslamp. Very bad combination. Here was a horrible fire i think that is where the washington buildings would come down. They invented the telephone. Edison was working on moving pictures. In three years of the bridge being opened we built the first steel framed skyscraper. The world is changing. We had barely completed the first transcontinental railroad. Five railroads were running across the street. That is not a great chapter in American History. But it was the industrial civilization over the continent. Where did that profit go . It came back to new york. Anybody who was making money in the country wanted to have an office in new york, they wanted to live in brooklyn. That is why this bridge is being built. New yorkers are finally saying the scale. It was like the pyramids. A city. Sing above you are looking at the brooklyn tower. Oward the new york that is the jersey palisades in the background. In the heart of downtown new york we begin to see highrise buildings because of the coming of the elevator. The elevator was first introduced in the 1850s. Everybody wanted to see one. Nobody would ride it. He will begin to get used to it. Developers began to build highrise Office Buildings. Very high rise. A height of 10 stories. You had to get and an elevator to get to the top. For the first time in history the offices at the top of the. Uilding were the worst you have to climb up five stories to get there. They would charge you top dollar. You were so lucky. You had a view from the top buildings. Aree towers, they say they 277 feet high. It is not really a river. It goes up and it goes down. Those buildings probably didnt go higher. That is higher than any other. It really was of a scale that you cannot imagine. It is being built here on the new york side. Hen it was built it came down that is the new york anchorage being built. It literally came down in the middle of this fivestory city. , it wasas a young kid before they had ripped out a lot of the buildings. It was still so much a part of new york city. It is not part of the city anymore. You cant really go back to it and touch it. It doesnt have the impact to me that it had when it rose out of the city. Look at the scale of it. We are looking at it from the hudson river. The towers have gone up. They are beginning to string the cables. When you walk up manhattan there are a few elevator buildings. Look how those towers rose above the city. It was really impressive. It still is. Overe come here from all the world just to walk over it. Cables a view of the being strong. Are bundled together. They go over the top. There are the Elevator Office buildings in the Central Business district. Tower with the roof on top of it. Of fultone foot street. That is the empire stores. They are now part of the Brooklyn Bridge park. They do all kinds of things to it. Look at that cable going up over the bridge. , dont know if you noticed that ran over the top of the towers following the path of the cable. I dont know who they got to walk. Here is the new york side. There is the new york anchorage. There are the Office Buildings in the background. Here is the brooklyn side. Fulton street i