Brooklyn Bridge The Brooklyn Bridge was built to connect New York City to Brooklyn. It is located across the East River. The total length of the bridge is 6016 feet. Before the bridge was built, people used to have to cross the river by ferry. The Brooklyn Bridge was the first long-span suspension bridge. It was used to carry cars and also the first to use steel. It is also one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, which has been serving New Yorkers for nearly 125 years. The construction of the bridge was a family effort by the Roebling family. John Roebling designed the bridge then his son continued working on the bridge since John suffered and died from tetanus from all the difficult labor. The bridge cost $18 million dollars. The way that they built this bridge was through a way of building called cassions and it was the first to use steel for its cable wire. John had designed the bridge to be six times stronger than he thought it needed to be and 250 extra cables were added to the design. Cassions were boxes that were made out of wood with no bottoms. The workers had to keep the waters from rushing in and men inside dug away at the mud and at the bottom of the river. Work inside caissons was hard labor. This is because you could die from coming up to fast. The disease was called “caisson disease”, but today we call it “the bends”. John Roebling’s son, Bedridden; developed this disease but he determined to stay in charge. He used a telescope to watch over the bridge’s progress. He told his wife his orders and she passed them on to the workers. During Bedridden’s illness a blast wrecked a caisson, a fire damaged another one and a cable snapped from its anchorage and crashed into the river. Even though all these problems occurred, and a total of 27 were found dead during the construction, workers still continued to build. After 14 years, Roebling successfully managed and took charge of the completion of one of the most famous bridges in the world, without even leaving his apartment! He was physically able to leave his apartment,