Tag: brooklyn bridge

Calendar: July 23

A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of July

Framing His Own Portrait

July 23, 1886 was the day that American Steve Brodie jumped (supposedly) off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived.

The Brooklyn Bridge, then known as the East River Bridge, had opened just three years before Steve Brodie’s claimed jump. A swimming instructor from Washington DC, Robert Emmet Odium, was killed while attempting the same stunt in May of 1885. Brodie, who was unemployed and aware of the publicity generated by Odium’s fatal jump, bragged to people in the Bowery section of New York City that he would take the jump. Wagers were made for and against; but Brodie never officially announced he would make the attempt.

The jump supposedly made by Steve Brodie on July 23, was from a height of 135 feet, the same height as a fourteen-story building. The New York Times in its coverage put the height at about 120 feet. The newspaper backed Brodie’s account of the jump, saying that Brodie had practiced by making shorter jumps from other bridges and from masts of ships. They also cited two witness descriptions by their reporters.

The New York Times account stated that Steve Bodie leaped into the East River, feet first, and emerged uninjured , except with a pain on his right side. Upon reaching shore, Steve Brodie was arrested by the police. The New York Times described Brodie as a newsboy and long-distance pedestrian who jumped from the bridge to win a two-hundred dollar bet. Another account that surfaced after the jump was a claim by Moritz Herzber, a liquor dealer, who said he offered to back a saloon for Brodie if he made the jump.

If true, Steve Bodie would have been the first person to survive a jump off the Brooklyn Bridge; however, his claim was disputed, which still lingers today. In 1930 it was reported that a retired police sergeant and friend of Bodie, Thomas K. Hastings, said that Steve Brodie had told him he didn’t make the jump and never said he did. In his book “The Great Bridge”, historian David McCullough said it was commonly believed by skeptics that a dummy was dropped from the bridge, and that Brodie merely swam out from shore and surfaced beside a passing barge.

After the stunt, Steve Brodie opened a saloon at 114 Bowery near Grand Street, which also became a museum for his bridge-jumping stunt. He became an actor capitalizing on his reputation, appearing in the vaudeville musicals “Mad Money” and “On the Bowery”. He later opened another saloon in Buffalo, New York. Brodie died in San Antonio, Texas in 1901; the cause of death described as either diabetes or tuberculosis. His fame persisted after his death, with the term “to do a Brodie”, meaning to take a chance, specifically a suicidal one, entered the language.

Calendar: January 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of January

Morning Cup of Joe

On January 2, 1870, construction of the Brooklynn Bridge begins with Washington Roebling as project manager.

In the summer of 1869, John Roebling, noted bridge-builder and chief engineer of the construction, severely injured his foot in a freak accident as he was surveying the site. He died of lockjaw not long after, and his son Washington Roebling, became chief engineer of the bridge project.

Construction on the Brooklynn-side wooden caisson began on January 2, 1870. To dig the foundations for the bridge’s enormous stone towers, caissons, enormous wooden boxes with no bottoms, were sunk in the river. Compressed air was pumped into them, and men inside would dig away at the sand and rock on the river bottom. The stone towers were built atop the caissons, which sank deeper into the river bottom.

After the caissons had been sunk to the river bottom, they were filled with concrete, and the construction of the granite stone towers continued above. When these anchorage towers reached their ultimate height, 278 feet above high water, work began on the four enormous cables that would support the roadway. Spinning the cables between the towers began in the summer of 1877, and was finished a year and four months later. But it would take nearly another five years to suspend the roadway from the cables and have the bridge ready for traffic.

The bridge was built with numerous passageways and compartments in its anchorage towers. New York City rented out the large vaults under the bridge’s Manhattan anchorage in order to fund the bridge. Opened in 1876, the vaults were used to store wine, as they were always at 60 °F (16 °C). This was called the “Blue Grotto” because of a shrine to the Virgin Mary next to an opening at the entrance.

Over the course of the next 40 years, several different liquor vendors would utilize the cellars below the bridge. City records indicate, for example, that in 1901, the “Luyties Brothers paid $5,000 for a vault on the Manhattan side of the bridge,” located at 204 Williams St., while in Brooklyn, “A. Smith & Company” forked over $500 a year to rent a wine cellar from 1901 until 1909.

By the late 1910s, as America debated the vices of liquor, the wine was moved out and the cellars were converted into newspaper storage. But the end of Prohibition in 1933 enticed new wine distributors. A celebration on July 11, 1934 was held in honor of Anthony Oechs & Co.’s move into the bridge’s blue-black caverns. After World War II, for logistical reasons, the city of New York took over permanent management of the cellars. To the despair of modern wine drinkers, adventurers, and those in pursuit of a good Instagram, the cellars have been closed and shuttered for years with only the occasional few gaining access.