By Sarah Hajkowski
The Brooklyn Bridge famously turned 141 years old on May 24, evoking reflections on its history as an industrial landmark as well as a symbol for the New York Cities of the past, present, and future. She has also lived a full literary life, described by poets, prose writers, and dramatists, even housing literary events and communities who derive inspiration from the Bridge’s endurance across the years.
Imposing, iconic, and essential are just a few of the words that come to mind when one thinks of the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York City, New York, USA. A civil engineering marvel for its time, it was designed by John Roebling who sadly died before he could see it completed. The legacy of his innovation was inherited by his adult son Washington Roebling, whose wife Emily (also with a background in mathematics and engineering) became crucial to the project when he was disabled and she became the unspoken chief engineer on the work site. Fourteen years and many obstacles later, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened in 1883 and after twenty-four hours, already more than 200,000 people had walked across it.
Victory Day
Chronicling the numberless times that the Bridge has been written about, the very first newspaper headline back when the bridge opened in May 1883 read:
“THE BIG BRIDGE/ Uniting the Cities of New York and Brooklyn,/ Was Opened with Gala Day Ceremonial, To-day”
Wisconsin State Journal
Before 1883 the East River represented an impassable boundary dividing Manhattan and Brooklyn, two of the largest cities in the country at the time. Its opening signified access to pedestrians, carriage, and dawning motor traffic alike, a desirable choice over the overcrowded ferries of the time. President Chester Arthur turned out to witness the occasion which included military fanfare, fireworks, and a 92-piece band. Emily Roebling, the de facto engineer, had combatted not only sexism but ableism as her husband Washington was in peril of removal from the project due to his health. She won this battle, and rode in a carriage across the Bridge with a rooster, to symbolize victory, in her lap. She was the first ever to do so.
The Current Globe I Bring
Walt Whitman was a poet, essayist, and journalist born in Huntington, New York who moved to Brooklyn as a child with his family of nine children and two Quaker parents. He worked as a printer, publisher, and editor with varying New York publications including his own Long-Islander for a brief while. Yet many modern-day writers and readers firmly associate Whitman with Brooklyn and his 1856 poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” is seen as a quintessential lyrical observation of the symbol of New York City. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” does not directly point out the Brooklyn Bridge, an intentional stroke according to essayist Arthur Geffen. Still, other Whitman allusions reference it, including an 1876 revision of his poem “Song of the Exposition” where he lyrically observes “This earth all spann’d with iron rails,” in a broad sense of the times marching forward and technology with them (NYCwalks.com). Still one can feel the vibration of New York City in which the Brooklyn Bridge was a new centerpiece with the lines from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,”
“I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, /Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, / Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd...”
Summer Reading List
Several novels and texts on the average grade schooler’s summer reading list will include settings and references to New York City and the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a kind of thought-provoking insight into the many “Great Books” that have survived into modern pedagogy without entirely moving away from the colloquial conception of the city as “the Center of the Universe.” This aside, ironically one of the most Brooklynian titles we might be able to recall from the classroom, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, only features the Bridge in passing.
Still, the memorable anecdote comes from the late chapters of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when inquisitive, sensitive protagonist Francie has a brief and bright romantic connection with a young soldier she knows as ‘Lee.’ When Lee asks Francie about where she lives, she offers that she generally uses the Williamsburg Bridge, to which he replies:
“I hoped it was the Brooklyn Bridge. I thought that if I ever got to New York, I'd like to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge”
Lee, 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn', Chapter Fifty-Two
And the two share an enchanted nighttime walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, unfortunately, doomed by Lee’s engagement to another girl. In this context, the Bridge holds a moment of unlasting beauty. Betty Smith’s tale of the Brooklyn Bridge is both a charmed and cautionary one.
After Renovation
In 2024, the Brooklyn Bridge stands proudly as she did a century-and-change earlier. Renovations took place over the 2000s and completed work in 2022 with a new bike path and sans its many street vendors in an effort to free up its walkway. The Bridge itself still sees an average of over 116,000 vehicles, 30,000 pedestrians and 3,000 cyclists per day, according to the NYC Department of Transportation. Over, around, and under it people gather at the triple-designated Bridge site as a National Historic Landmark, a New York City landmark, and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
Two significant literary associations for the Brooklyn Bridge in the 21st century are the coalition identified as Brooklyn Poets, and the annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge hosted by Poets House library and meeting place. Brooklyn Poets cites as their mission “[to honor] the literary heritage of Brooklyn by celebrating and cultivating community and craft” (brooklynpoets.org)and its activities include gatherings at its Montague Street headquarters, a Poets Roster with individual profiles about contributor experiences in Brooklyn, and a groundbreaking new network for poets and mentors aptly named “The Bridge.” Finally, the annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge gathers contemporary poets and ticketholders for a reading of new and old work alike, concluding with a traditional reading of Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”
More on poets who have taken the Brooklyn Bridge as a muse can be found on Poets.org
“Nobody wants to live with a corpse.
I want to show him — all of them —
strut around this city, skin melting off bones, screaming, “I am here!”
to the Brooklyn Bridge, all 14,680 tons of her.”
-Mari Pack, “Screaming at the Brooklyn Bridge” (After Robert Lowell’s “Waking in the Blue”)
Community & Credits
Mari Pack: LinkedIn
Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge: Site
About the Writer
Sarah Hajkowski is a poet, playwright, and journalist based on the East Coast, USA. In addition to Erato, she is a writer on Medium.com, publishes plays to NPX: New Play Exchange, and freelances as a theatre artist. If not writing, she will be listening to music, watching horror movies, and connecting with likeminded humans.
Find out more at sarahhajkowski.com and reach out on social media.
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