The bridge took 14 years, three Roeblings, and hundreds of workers laboring inside pressurized underwater chambers to build — and the family's story is as dramatic as the structure they left behind.
When the Brooklyn Bridge opened in May 1883, it connected two cities that had spent decades arguing about whether such a crossing was even possible. New York and Brooklyn were still separate municipalities, and the East River between them was one of the busiest, most treacherous stretches of water on the Eastern Seaboard. What rose above it was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time — and the most contested engineering project in American history.
The story belongs almost entirely to one family. John Augustus Roebling — a German immigrant who had already built a reputation designing suspension bridges and manufacturing wire rope — envisioned and designed the East River crossing. He never got to build it. In 1869, a ferry crushed his foot at the Fulton Ferry landing, and he died of tetanus weeks later. His son Washington Roebling took over.
Washington threw himself into the work, spending months inside the underwater caissons — pressurized wooden chambers sunk to the riverbed to allow workers to excavate the foundations. The compressed air caused decompression illness. By 1872 he was bedridden, too sick to visit the site he was still running by correspondence from a window overlooking the East River.
His wife Emily Warren Roebling stepped in. She became the bridge’s de facto field engineer — learning the mathematics and cable theory herself, communicating her husband’s directives, navigating a Board of Trustees that once tried to remove Washington from the project entirely. She was the first person to cross the completed bridge.
On this tour you’ll walk the full span of the bridge with that history in hand — pausing at architectural details, looking at historic photographs that place the construction in context, and seeing the monuments dedicated to the Roebling family along the way. The route ends in DUMBO, the former industrial waterfront neighborhood that spent nearly a century in the bridge’s shadow before transforming into one of Brooklyn’s most recognizable districts. The cobblestone streets and brick warehouses of DUMBO’s industrial era are still intact, and the view back toward Manhattan from Brooklyn tells its own story about how two cities became one.
2 hours. The tour starts at 38 Park Row and ends at the Time Out Market in Dumbo.
This tour has steps down from the bridge into DUMBO on the Brooklyn side, so this tour is not accessible.
Please contact us to set up a private tour of the bridge with our expert guides.
This very special experience is unlike any tour in New York. Learn more about booking a tour with the great-great-grandson of Washington and Emily Roebling. A tour with Kriss can only be booked as a private tour.
This tour is entirely outdoors — you won’t go inside any buildings. The walk is moderate: a full bridge crossing plus ground-level time in DUMBO, so comfortable shoes matter. Not wheelchair accessible due to steps on the Brooklyn descent from the bridge. This tour typically starts early in the day to avoid the heaviest foot traffic on the walkway.
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