Skip to main content

Book Review: "The Great Bridge"

By
David McCullough's 1972 history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, is an engaging story that follows the life of Colonel Washington Roebling, the son of the bridge's designer and the Chief Engineer of the works throughout the construction.  McCullough is an engaging historian and had access to a huge amount of archival material from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to use in the writing, so he was able to cover all aspects of the construction from a personal as well as a technical perspective.  The Brooklyn Bridge was the first bridge to cross the East River, the world's largest suspension bridge at the time, and an enormous undertaking by any reckoning.  Of particular interest is the involvement of Roebling's wife Emily Warren Roebling, who acted in Roebling's place after he was paralyzed by the bends and served to direct the works by transmitting his instructions to the assistant engineers.  Constructed before "caisson disease" (the bends) was fully understood, many workers in the huge caisson foundations of the two bridge piers were affected by the disease, including Roebling.  Reading about the obviously short-sighted protests against the construction of the bridge, as possibly being deleterious to shipping traffic - and besides, the ferries were good enough, certainly! - is entertaining, especially in light of how many more bridges and tunnels we have built subsequently.  The Great Bridge is easily readable even for those with no technical background, and a thorough investigation of engineering construction in late 19th-century America.  A fun read.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

By
Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s.  Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion.  In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects.  Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali...
1 comment
Read more

A Voter's Guide: Local Elections 2016

By
I spent a long time researching different local races and some of the ballot measures here in Santa Clara County.  In case you're on the fence or want some further information to guide your voting, I've compiled my thoughts here. Selection Methodology I have three tiers for selecting  candidates. 1. Alignment on Issues:  I will choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with me on the issues I think are important. 2. Experience and Education:  All other things being equal, I will choose the candidate who has the most knowledge of what is required for the position, either through education, previous experience, or active participation in similar positions. 3. Women and Minorities:  All other things being equal (#1 and #2 above), I will choose candidates who are women or minorities in order to increase the diversity of voices of our elected officials.  It's my own personal form of affirmative action. The Issues We're fortunate enough to li...
Post a Comment
Read more

Housing Affordability in the Bay Area: An Architectural Perspective

By
The Bay Area's housing crisis has gained a status akin to the weather: We can't help but mention it whenever two or more Bay Area residents are gathered together, and we feel there's equally nothing we can do to change it.  But instead of the general praise given to the area's weather, there is general despair about the state of housing.  At least among the twenty-something set and construction industry professionals who make up my peers and colleagues, there are few answers and much criticism for the way we live here.  It's not dense enough, public transportation is a sham, and housing costs are outrageous.  Many of my peers agree that they would not live here at all except that their spouse/significant other works in the tech industry, without whose salary they could not afford to live here, but whose worth is so valued here that it makes little sense economically to live elsewhere.  Here in the Peninsula it's just as bad as in San Francisco ("the city...
Post a Comment
Read more