By 1930 Roebling had 175 men building the George
Washington Bridge cables (Fig. 9), and one of them was 20-year- old Allen Searls, who had grown up on Hoyt Avenue a stone’s throw from where the Fort Lee cut through the Palisades was then taking shape. Using John A. Roebling’s spinning method, Searls and his fellow cable spinners laid 26,774, 3/16-inch “Roebling High Strength Galvanized Bridge Wires” into each of the four cables, for a total of 106,000 miles of wire (Figs. 1 & 7). Jan Searls, a retired Navy Commander living in North Carolina,
Fig. 8: John A. Roebling’s Sons Company Prestretcher at the Kinkora Works, Roebling, N.J., c1929. The Company developed the innovative 1,850-feet long
track to prestretch the footbridge ropes for the George Washington Bridge. Smithsonian Institution.
field in many years.” Donald Sayenga, a wire rope historian and former sales executive at Bethlehem Steel’s wire rope division, recently called the Prestretcher “the first machine in the world intended to modify factory made cables by placing a full length of wire rope under tension for an extended period bearing the working load until the wires rearranged themselves to eliminate their inherent looseness.” For maximum efficiency, the Roebling Company fabricated the nearly 36 miles of 2 7/8-inch footbridge ropes with six 37-wire strands and an independent 7x19 wire rope center for double duty, which we’ll get back to shortly.
recalls her father talking about his work on the bridge when she and her brother, Doc Searls, were growing up in Maywood, N.J., where she could see the bridge’s Fort Lee Tower from her bedroom window. “Dad grew up with the Palisades as his backyard, and his explorations there no doubt made him comfortable with great heights. A Roebling engineer renting the second floor in my grandparents’ house got him the job on the bridge. Dad told us that working up on the bridge, you were always conscious of safety but you had to separate yourself from thinking about being that high and really focus on your work, otherwise you couldn’t go up there and do it.” “Dad loved photography from
growing up in Fort Lee where the early movies were made, and he developed all his own film. He loved observing and photographing the vistas from the footbridges and the towers, and he taught my brother and me to always look carefully at everything (Fig. 10). He also taught us about working together, and he used to say that each of the wires they spun on the bridge was not very strong on its own, but when they were all put together as a cable, look what they can do. Te ideas he developed on the bridge about working together have always informed everything I’ve done in my career.” With innovations Sunderland and his engineering staff developed,
Fig. 10: Allen Searls on top of the Fort Lee Tower, with the cable wrapping nearly
complete, 1931. Jan Searls and & Doc Searls
and with their own diligent efforts, Searls and his fellow cable spinners completed the four cables in October 1930, 13 months ahead of schedule. Tey then disassembled the footbridges to prepare the footbridge ropes for their long-term duty. Cutting the ropes into 292 pieces of pre-marked lengths and socketing them at the bridge site, the Roebling crew installed them as the suspender ropes for holding up the bridge deck, where they remain in place today. On opening day, October 25, 1931, fittingly 100 years after
Fig. 9: The Roebling Cable Crew with the Fort Lee Tower in the background. Allen Searls set up this photograph and is in the middle row in the sleeveless shirt behind the man with long sleeves. The “ROEBLING” letters on the 600-feet high Tower were lit at night and visible for miles around. Jan Searls and & Doc Searls
22 MAY-JUNE 2012 WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
John A. Roebling immigrated to America, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt told the crowd of 30,000 assembled at the bridge, “Today, faced with critical problems in every field, we are inclined to put our faith in mechanical panaceas, underestimating that most powerful of all machines, the human mind. Tese steel spans, these fine-spun cables are a vivid reminder that skill and scientific planning must be the keynote of all great achievements. Behind this mighty structure, that seems almost superhuman in its perfection, is an inspiring background of high intelligence.” Next issue we’ll take a look at the Port Authority’s upcoming work on the Roebling cables and suspender ropes.
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