





Building the Brooklyn Bridge 1869–1883: An Illustrated History, with Images in 3D
Jeffrey I. Richman, with essays by Richard Haw and Erica Wagner
Published in association with The Green-Wood Historic Fund
This visually stunning and informative history of the building of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge brings together more than 250 historic images—44 of which are in 3D—to document the different stages of its construction. A born storyteller, Richman relates how a small group of dedicated engineers and thousands of workers toiled for more than a decade to construct what was then the largest suspension bridge ever built, section by section, from the massive anchorages and elegant towers to the cables and bridge railway (operational four months after the bridge’s official opening). He reminds us how profoundly modern and groundbreaking the bridge was, in its use of steel (a new material) and pioneering construction methods. The Brooklyn Bridge still elicits awe and admiration today.
September 2021
Hardcover with dust jacket
336 pages
253 illustrations (55 in color + 44 in 3D)
9 x 11.25 inches
ISBN: 978-1735600123
$55.00
Description
The captivating story of how a bridge of unprecedented size and technology was built during an age of remarkable innovation.
Proclaimed the “eighth wonder of the world” soon after its completion, this awe-inspiring structure has been a National Historic Landmark since 1964. This book invites the reader to step back in time to discover why this iconic bridge continues to hold such a special place in the hearts of so many. Spanning the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge connected for the first time the then independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. It was not only a modern engineering feat of extraordinary imagination, fortitude, and skill, it also was a towering beacon of human triumph.
Author Jeffrey Richman, historian at Brooklyn’s famed Green-Wood Cemetery, has gathered more than 250 superb nineteenth-century images, many never before published on the printed page, including engineering drawings, photographs, stereographs, woodcuts, and colored lithographs. Flipping through the book, one can imagine the excitement people around the world felt as they followed the progress of the bridge’s construction, either through the illustrated papers of the day or using viewers to look at stereographs in three dimensions. Richman specially commissioned forty-four anaglyphs—3D images generated from the historic stereographs—to recreate the 3D experience on the page.
Every copy of the book includes a pair of 3D glasses kept in a pocket inside the back cover, offering the reader the sensation of being at the construction site as the towers began to rise.
Advance Praise
“If you love Brooklyn or bridges or New York City or cities or 19th-century marvels––or all of the above, as I do––this is a perfect feast, a would-be time-traveler’s delight, overflowing with rare and evocative and fascinating images. It’s a terrific book.”
–Kurt Andersen, Peabody Award-winning journalist and author of Evil Geniuses, Fantasyland, Heyday
“The bridge, with its majestic and inspiring presence, is Brooklyn’s gift to the world. The book will fire your passion for this icon to new heights and reaffirm the potential in all of us.”
–Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn borough president, 2002–2013
“Jeff Richman has pulled together a stunning book full of magical images and beautifully told episodes that help us better understand just how remarkable this engineering feat truly was. This is a joyful book—a celebration of one of America’s iconic architectural achievements.”
–Deborah Schwartz, president of the former Brooklyn Historical Society, 2006–2020
“Richman provides researchers and devotees of ‘the great bridge’ a richly detailed pictorial record with compelling new perspectives on the construction details of this nineteenth-century engineering feat. A unique feature are the 3D images made from nineteenth-century stereographs. Using the 3D glasses that come with the book, the reader will feel present at the moment the image was captured. This book is a significant contribution to the scholarship on the Brooklyn Bridge and serves as an essential compendium to David McCullough’s work.”
–Anthony M. Cucchiara, Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College
About the Author
Jeffrey I. Richman has been fascinated by New York City’s history for as long as he can remember. In 2007, after thirty-three years practicing law, representing indigent criminal defendants, he became the full-time historian at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Since then, he has led Green-Wood’s Civil War, World War I, and World War II projects. The author of three books, including Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure (1998), Richman has also curated several Green-Wood gallery exhibitions. He is an avid collector who has amassed a notable collection of stereoview and lantern slide photographs of New York City, including many of the Brooklyn Bridge under construction, which he has donated to The Green-Wood Historic Fund. One of his fondest memories is of attending the one-hundredth anniversary of the bridge’s opening in 1983—just one milestone in his love affair with the Brooklyn Bridge.