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The Brooklyn Bridge was the greatest engineering feat of its era and remains one of the best-loved bridges in the world. It was the vision of the German immigrant and engineer John A. Roebling and completed by his son Washington, an engineer and Civil War veteran. When the younger Roebling fell ill he was assisted by his wife Emily. The bridge was built primarily by hand over a 15-year period - from 1869 to 1883. As many as 600 people worked on the Bridge at a time and 27 lives were lost during the construction. The average age of the staff of engineers who oversaw the project was 31. When it opened to the public on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world and the tallest man-made structure on the continent - towering over the New York City skyline
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"When the perfected bridge shall permanently and uninterruptedly connect the two cities (of New York and Brooklyn), the daily thousands who cross it will consider it a sort of natural and inevitable phenomenon, such as the rising and setting of the sun, and they will unconsciously overlook the preliminary difficulties surmounted before the structure spanned the stream, and will perhaps undervalue the indomitable courage, the absolute faith, the consummate genius which assured the engineer's
triumph."
Thomas Kinsella, Brooklyn Eagle, 1872
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