Brooklyn Bridge
— — the gothic arches that taught America to build big.
Not only on a wall.
“The walk from City Hall starts on planks above the traffic deck, and the towers come at you slowly. Two gothic arches in granite and limestone, the first long-span suspension cable in steel, a promenade that has carried New Yorkers since 1883. Most people stop at the Brooklyn tower for the same photograph. The light off the river does most of the work.
Brooklyn Bridge, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Brooklyn Bridge crosses the East River between Manhattan's City Hall and Brooklyn Heights, joining two boroughs that were separate cities when construction began in 1869. The main span runs 1,595.5 feet, which made it the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened on May 24, 1883. John A. Roebling designed it; his son Washington and Washington's wife Emily Roebling finished it after John's death from a dock accident. The elevated pedestrian promenade sits above the traffic deck, a design choice rare among American bridges.
The two towers are New York granite and Maine limestone, rising 276.5 feet above mean high water. The pointed arches read as Gothic Revival but were chosen as much for compression strength as for style. Each tower was sunk on a pneumatic caisson, an experimental method that gave Washington Roebling decompression sickness and confined him to a Brooklyn Heights room for the rest of construction. The cables are galvanized steel wire, the first time steel was used in a long-span suspension bridge in the United States.
The pedestrian promenade runs roughly 1.1 miles between the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches and is open without charge at all hours. The 2021 redesign moved cyclists down to a former traffic lane, giving walkers the full width of the upper boards. From the Brooklyn side, the entrance near Washington Street puts you in DUMBO under the Manhattan Bridge for the much-photographed view down Washington Street. Early morning before the cruise crowds, or the hour after sunset, are the quietest windows on a structure that carries roughly 10,000 walkers a day.