Wire Rope Reel. Roebling Collection, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Wagner’s new book, Chief Engineer, provides a detailed description of Washington who has also become a hero and a role model for Wagner herself. “I began to form a great admiration for this man,” she says. One of the central themes in her book that Wagner highlights about Washington is his unwavering ability to persevere through many abnormally difficult trials. First of all, his father, John A. Roebling, was cruel, brutal, and harsh to his immediate family members including Washington. Ten, Washington enlisted in the Civil War to design bridges for the Union’s troops. Washington came out of the Civil War unscathed and with a new wife who, alongside her husband, would later become a central figure in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. “After Washington’s marriage to Emily, John
Roebling sent his son and new wife to Europe so that Washington could research important developments in all the technologies that would be important for the building of the Brooklyn Bridge – the use of caissons and wire manufacture, especially. Washington wrote extraordinary letters home to his father – dozens of
pages of remarkable detail about everything he saw and observed,” says Wagner. By this time, Washington’s father already had an international reputation that made it relatively easy for Washington to gain access to wire rope manufacturers and to meet with prominent civil engineers who had designed cutting-edge bridges throughout Germany, England, and France. It was likely during Washington’s stay in Europe that he began to garner his writing style and to record, in writing, a great deal of valuable information that he would later use to design the Brooklyn Bridge. While it was important for Washington to have his
father’s reputation open doors for him, Washington Roebling and his genius have gone vastly underrepresented in historical references. History is being rewritten now with Wagner’s Chief Engineer. “One of the great difficulties that Washington endured his whole life was to be in his father’s shadow until the day he died,” says Wagner. “I am not sure how many of the people who cross the Brooklyn Bridge know that it was Washington, not John Roebling, who built this great bridge.”
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