Thank you to Carol Simon Levin for sharing this article about Emily Warren Roebling.
Bridge
Builder in Petticoats: Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge
On December 12, 1881, people in New York City would have
witnessed a strange sight. High above the East River, men in business
suits were walking cautiously along a narrow path of wooden boards laid across
the steel frame of a huge bridge. Strangest of all, the line was led by a
woman, her long skirt billowing as she showed them details of the
construction. When they reached the New York side, everyone toasted her
with champagne. It was the first official crossing of the Brooklyn
Bridge.
In 1881, women could not vote in most state and federal
elections. Their minds and bodies were considered weak and fragile. Very
few colleges accepted female students and, though poor women worked, it was
unthinkable for respectable middle and upper-class women to do so. They
most certainly would not be helping to supervise the greatest construction
project of the age.
But Emily Warren Roebling was doing just that.
After her husband Washington Roebling, the Chief Engineer of the
bridge, became an invalid from injuries received on the project, Emily became his
eyes and ears, feet and hands and voice.
She started out carrying his orders back and forth to the site. When he
became unable to read or write, she read aloud all written material to him and
wrote his responses. Since Washington could not talk to anyone but Emily
without becoming exhausted, he began discussing all the details of the bridge
with her, expecting that she would explain these to the assistant
engineers. As a result, although she never went to an engineering
university, Emily gradually learned quite a lot about bridge engineering.
For nearly eleven years, the bridge company kept her work a
secret. (They worried that the public would lose confidence in the safety of
the project if they knew a woman was involved.)
Her role was finally revealed on May 24, 1883 at the opening ceremonies
when Congressman Abram S. Hewitt honored her work in a speech.
Later that day, The Brooklyn Eagle publicly praised Emily in its article on the opening of the
bridge:
Great emergencies are the
opportunities of great minds. Mrs. Emily Roebling met this difficulty as
nobody else could. She addressed her remarkable intelligence to the
acquisition of the higher mathematics... She mastered this most bewildering
of sciences, applied it to the bridge, was in rapport with her husband, and
dazzled and astounded the engineers by her complete and intelligent conception
of their chief’s theories and plans…Day after day, when she could be spared
from the sickroom, in cold and in wet, the devoted wife exchanged the duties of
chief nurse for those of chief engineer of the bridge, explaining knotty
points, examining results for herself, and thus she established the most
perfect means of communication between the structure and its author.
How well she discharged this self-imposed duty the grand and beautiful causeway
best tells.
Emily did not rest on her accomplishments. After the bridge, she
helped design the family mansion in Trenton, studied law, attended the
coronation of the Tsar of Russia and even took tea with Queen Victoria.
At the time of her death, she was called “one of the most distinguished women
in the country” and “the most famous woman in New Jersey” – yet today most
people don’t even know her name!
If you walk across the bridge, be sure look at the bronze plaque on the East Tower. It states:
The
Builders of the Bridge
Dedicated to the Memory of
Emily Warren Roebling
1843-1903
whose faith and courage
helped her stricken husband
Col. Washington A.
Roebling, C.E.
1837-1926
complete the construction
of this bridge
from the plans of his
father
John A. Roebling, C.E.
1806-1869
who gave his life to the
bridge
“BACK OF EVERY GREAT WORK
WE CAN FIND THE SELF-SACRIFICING DEVOTION OF A WOMAN.”
Carol Simon
Levin is a librarian at the Somerset County Library and a member of the New
Jersey Storyteller’s Network. She impersonates Emily and other forgotten women
in presentations available for libraries, senior centers, historical societies
and other venues. Programs are
accompanied by a "lantern slide show" (PowerPoint) with photographs
and lithographs. They can be tailored
for adult or youth audiences. For further information, write her at cslevin59 (at) gmail
(dot) com. For more
information about Emily Roebling, check out www.bridgebuilderinpetticoats.com.
