The bridge's elevated pedestrian promenade, built in 1883 eighteen feet above the road, was shared with cyclists until 2021, when the city gave bikes their own protected lane below.
The Manhattan-side entrance is a tight merge point for pedestrians and cyclists, so stay alert and keep to the marked walking side rather than drifting into the bike lane.
The bridge opened on May 24, 1883 with the longest suspension span in the world, 1,595 feet between towers rising 278 feet in limestone, granite and Rosendale cement. John A. Roebling designed it and died of tetanus before construction began. His son Washington took over, was disabled by decompression sickness contracted in the pressurized caissons sunk for the tower foundations, and directed the remaining years of work from a window in Brooklyn Heights while his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, carried instructions to the site and learned enough engineering to answer for them.
The walk uses the promenade, a boarded deck running between the two roadways and eighteen feet above them. Until 2021 it carried walkers and cyclists together, badly; the city then converted an inner traffic lane into a protected two-way bike lane and left the promenade to pedestrians. Crossing takes most people around half an hour at a stroll. The Manhattan approach from City Hall Park is the pinch point where crowds gather, the stone towers with their Gothic arches are the middle of the walk, and the Brooklyn end sets you down near Fulton Ferry Landing, DUMBO and Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The stories a guide is there for are mostly about doubt. A week after the opening, a rumor that the bridge was collapsing set off a stampede on the Manhattan stairs that killed twelve people; the following May, P. T. Barnum walked twenty-one elephants across to demonstrate that it would hold. Wire supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh proved to be below the specified grade and remains in the cables, the engineers having compensated by adding extra strands rather than starting again.
The bridge is free and open at all hours, so a tour sells you the history and the route rather than access. Walking toward Manhattan puts the skyline in front of you the whole way.
City Hall Park, New York, NY 10007
The Brooklyn Bridge is a cable-stayed suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River. It was also the longest suspension bridge in the world when opened, with a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m) and a deck 127 ft (38.7 m) above mean high water. The span was originally called the New York and Brooklyn Bridge or the East River Bridge but was officially renamed the Brooklyn Bridge in 1915.
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