Washington Roebling

His father co-founded the Pennsylvania town he was born in, and then designed the life around him. Washington took an engineering degree at Rensselaer in 1857 with a thesis on a suspension aqueduct, went straight to work under his father on a bridge over the Allegheny, and then to the family wire mill in Trenton. The war interrupted that. He enlisted as a private in April 1861, quit garrison duty inside two months for an artillery company, and spent the next four years building military suspension bridges and going up in observation balloons. From one of them, after Chancellorsville, he watched Lee's army start north. On July 2, 1863, he was among the first Union officers on Little Round Top. He ended the war a brevet colonel.

On June 28, 1869 a ferry crushed his father's foot at the Fulton slip. The toes came off, tetanus set in, and John A. Roebling died the following month, leaving his son the Brooklyn Bridge and the two caissons that would carry its towers. Washington designed them, then went down into them. The Brooklyn caisson stopped 44 feet under high water. The Manhattan one went to 78 feet, where the air pressure was crushing. In December 1870 a fire broke out inside the Brooklyn caisson and he directed the firefighting from within it. He also caught the cable contractor J. Lloyd Haigh substituting inferior wire — too late to pull it out, so he ordered 150 additional wires added to every cable. The bridge opened on May 24, 1883.

An estimated 27 men died building the bridge. The project physician, Andrew Smith, treated 110 cases of decompression sickness in the first five months of 1872 and gave the condition its name, caisson disease. Roebling was one of the cases. He never worked at the site again. He ran the largest construction project in the country from a room in Brooklyn Heights, watching through a telescope, while his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, carried his instructions to the engineers, taught herself bridge construction, and lobbied the trustees to keep him in the title. She held no title of her own. When the bridge opened on May 24, 1883, she was officially the first person to cross it.

He outlived the opening by 43 years and spent most of them on minerals. The collection ran past 16,000 specimens, including a nearly 18-carat yellow diamond dug out of Arkansas in 1917, and his son gave the whole of it to the Smithsonian in 1926. He also endowed the Mineralogical Society of America with $40,000 in bonds, which still pays for the Roebling Medal. Emily died of stomach cancer in 1903 and he remarried in 1908. In 1921, at 84, he took over the family wire company after a nephew died suddenly, and ran it until he died at Trenton on July 21, 1926, bedridden for the last two months.

Washington Roebling's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Sixth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh building
  Built with his father over the Allegheny River 1860
• The Brooklyn Bridge caissons invention
  The Manhattan caisson reached 78 feet below high water 1872
• Brooklyn Bridge building
  Chief engineer from 1869, and absent from the site after 1872 1883
• The Roebling mineral collection other
  More than 16,000 specimens, now in the Smithsonian gem hall 1926
• The Roebling Fund other
  A $40,000 gift that still funds mineralogy's highest award 1926
• Washington Roebling's Father: A Memoir of John A. Roebling book
  His own manuscript, printed 83 years after his death 2009

• 1857 aged ~20 Graduates from Rensselaer with a thesis on a suspension aqueduct
• April 16, 1861 aged 23 Enlists as a private in the New Jersey Militia He resigned after two months to get out of garrison duty.
• July 2, 1863 aged 26 Among the first Union officers on Little Round Top He was aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren.
• January 18, 1865 aged 27 Marries Emily Warren, his commanding general's sister A double wedding at Cold Spring, New York.
• July 22, 1869 aged 32 His father dies of tetanus and he becomes chief engineer A ferry had crushed the elder Roebling's foot at the Fulton slip on June 28.
• December 1870 aged 33 Directs the firefighting from inside the burning Brooklyn caisson The blaze delayed the work for months while the holes were repaired.
• 1872 aged ~35 Decompression sickness ends his ability to visit the site The project physician treated 110 cases that spring and named the condition caisson disease.
• May 24, 1883 aged 45 The Brooklyn Bridge opens and Emily Roebling officially crosses first An estimated 27 men had died building it.
• July 21, 1926 aged 89 Dies at Trenton at 89, after two months bedridden

• John A. Roebling 1806–1869
  Developed wire-rope suspension bridge design and planned the Brooklyn Bridge. son of
• Robert E. Lee 1807–1870
  Confederate commander whose military reputation and later commemoration became central to Civil War memory and the Lost Cause. tracked his army from a balloon
• Robert Moses 1888–1981
  Master builder whose roads, parks, and public works reshaped metropolitan New York while displacing communities and entrenching car dependence. the next man to rebuild New York
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. supplied the age of steel that followed his wire
• Frederick Law Olmsted 1822–1903
  Landscape architect who designed Central Park and established public parks as essential American civic infrastructure. built the other public New York