Workers Investigating Beneath The Brooklyn Bridge Stumbled Upon A Sinister Cold War Secret

You may think a bridge is an inherently simple thing. After all, it’s just a platform covering the gap between two places, right? It allows you to cross a river or road without getting your feet wet. And in the case of the Brooklyn Bridge, it means the New York boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn can stay connected, despite the water between them.

The thing is, though, any bridge can get complicated when you consider the level of engineering involved — and the Brooklyn Bridge is a particularly pertinent example. It’s a suspension bridge, which means it can span a wider space than other types. When the Brooklyn Bridge was built in the 19th century, the techniques and materials it used were new and exciting.

If you visit the Brooklyn Bridge today, you have the choice of whether you travel on foot across the elevated walkway or cycle or drive along the road. What you can’t do, though, is visit the space inside, where its architect designed a series of vaults in the so-called “anchorages” where the cables are attached to stone supports. The anchorages on the Manhattan and Brooklyn sides were originally meant to be shopping arcades.

This space has mostly been used for storage, but the vaults used to host exciting parties and creative exhibitions. That can’t happen anymore, sadly, because of how security concerns have increased. There was also another hidden area found in 2006, but that one is even more secret. It’s shocking that we rediscovered it at all.

Suspension bridges have been around since ancient times. There was one built in India during the 4th century, for example, which had cables made of plaited bamboo. The basic principle behind structures like this one is that the platform of the bridge hangs from overhead cables attached to towers. In other words, it’s suspended. Modern suspension bridges showed up in the United States in 1801.

This was Jacob’s Creek Bridge in Pennsylvania, which we have James Finley to thank for. This thing wasn’t just the first of its kind in America, but also the world. It was the start of a whole new era in engineering, but there were problems. Namely, when it was too windy or if the load was too heavy, then the suspension bridge would get a little wobbly.

The man we have to thank for making suspension bridges much sturdier is John Augustus Roebling, who happened to design the Brooklyn Bridge. Before he created his masterpiece, though, he had great success bridging both the Niagara Gorge in upstate New York and the Ohio River as it travelled through Cincinnati.

Roebling was born in Prussia, but he moved to the U.S. when he was 25. He’d studied building in Berlin and would later work as a surveyor in Pennsylvania. It was there he saw hemp rope holding up rail tracks on a slope. He realized if he could replace them with metal cables, then they’d be stronger and more long-lasting.

It was the beginning of a highly successful business manufacturing wire cables, some of which were used in bridge building. When politicians saw his success in Cincinnati and Niagara Falls, they were pleased to approve his plan for something the world had never seen: a steel suspension bridge to run from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

In 1867 it was time to combine every new technique that Roebling had pioneered, from the steel cables to new types of trusses. The Brooklyn Bridge would be Roebling’s magnum opus, but unfortunately he never saw it finished. In a clear example of what a challenging project it was, he was killed by an injury he received on site.

Roebling had been standing on a ferry slip, looking at what would become the Brooklyn side tower. When a boat then collided with the slip, he couldn’t move away in time and his foot was crushed. That might not sound like a fatal wound, but it became infected. Roebling shunned conventional medicine and poured unsterilized water on his foot. He caught what proved to be a fatal case of tetanus.

Roebling was only 63 when he died, but his son Washington Roebling and daughter-in-law Emily Warren Roebling were ready to take up the mantle. Not that the building work was going to get any easier. Washington developed something called decompression sickness and had to direct the work confined to his Brooklyn apartment, using binoculars and his wife to stay in touch with the growing bridge.

Other problems beset the project, including fire and explosions. Then there were more mundane issues, like the fraudster who supplied them with a faulty cable that needed to be replaced. Plus, Washington Roebling wasn’t the only man involved to suffer with decompression sickness. When all was said and done, no less than 20 laborers had died during construction.

Decompression sickness was a problem because of the techniques used to build the bridge. Giant, airtight wood boxes known as caissons were sunk to the bottom of the East River. They were held in place with granite blocks and filled with pressurized air to force out any water. It was inside these caissons that laborers known as sandhogs excavated the foundations.

For a mere $2 every day, the sandhogs shoveled away at the riverbed, using dynamite for particularly tricky bits. They’d go down until they hit bedrock, which at the Brooklyn end was 44 feet down and at Manhattan was 78 feet. At that point they could fill the caisson with poured concrete, before heading back to ground level in what were called airlocks.

As hot and headachy as it was inside the caissons, it was traveling down to them that was the worst. You could breathe in airlocks, but they were filled with compressed air that could get into your blood. This could lead to the bends, which was a dreadful condition. This would remain a problem until 20th century scientists figured out how to avoid it, but that, of course, was too late for the Brooklyn Bridge sandhogs.

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge took 14 years overall. Its price at the time was a hefty $15 million, but this really makes your eyes water when you realize it’s over $320 million in today’s money. But eventually it all came together and that mighty monument of limestone, granite, and steel finally stood tall.

With so much trouble dogging the work, it’s no wonder the eventual completion of the bridge in 1883 was celebrated as a triumph. It was nearly 1,600 feet long and would remain the world’s longest bridge until 1890. The first person to cross it was Emily Warren Roebling, carrying a rooster to denote victory and riding in a carriage.

Among the distinguished guests at the opening were President Chester A. Arthur and the governor of New York Grover Cleveland. Later, the bridge would inspire celebrated poets like Walt Whitman. Today, around 150,000 people continue to use the bridge daily, whether on foot or in a vehicle. One of the more unusual crossings was made by circus master P. T. Barnum and 21 of his elephants. That answered any questions about its stability.

Some of the people who visit the bridge regularly today are inspectors from the Department of Transportation. They’re the ones who make sure every tunnel and bridge in New York City is safe. And it was during their routine checks on the Brooklyn Bridge in 2006 that they found something astonishing in the Manhattan anchorage.

It was a fallout shelter. In other words, it was the kind of bunker built during the height of the Cold War, when fear of nuclear Armageddon was never far from the surface. You can find these kinds of shelters all around the United States, including throughout New York City. Except, nobody knew one was inside the Brooklyn Bridge.

There were still plenty of supplies in the bunker, despite the decades since it was last in use. Some of them were dated from 1962, while others went even further back to 1957. And if you’re wondering just how real the threat of nuclear war was during this period, remember that 1962 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That might have been the tensest moment of the Cold War.

In fact, the year 1957 was also really significant in the annals of Cold War history. It was during that year that the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth. This caused something of a panic amongst the Americans, who feared they could be outmatched on the technology front. The ensuing “Space Race” would eventually send American astronauts to the Moon.

Inside the bunker the inspectors found everything you could need to survive. That included water, food, blankets, and medical supplies. Admittedly, anyone forced to eat all 350,000 of the high-calorie crackers stored there might not have appreciated them by the end. The drugs inside the unit included dextran, which is used to help with shock.

Advice on the water barrels suggested that once you’d drunk the contents, you could use them when you inevitably needed to relieve yourself. Other labels indicated these supplies came from the Office of Civil Defense. If the name sounds unfamiliar, that’s because it’s been replaced with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The packaging for the crackers emphasized the need for everyone to eat 10,000 calories a day. It also made it clear that the crackers shouldn’t be eaten after they’d been stored for 10 years. As it’s been a little longer than that, there was surely some trepidation about the idea of trying them.

Fans of the popular TV drama Mad Men will be glad to hear it wasn’t just survival gear stored in the bunker. There were also a bunch of posters designed to sing the praises of New York City. It seems like a 1960s ad campaign promoting the Big Apple was very important to someone.

Questions remain about exactly how and why the bunker was built. A proper nuclear fallout shelter is traditionally deep underground, but these stores were found on the third story of a multi-level area of the anchorage. Light and air were limited, but they could still get in — which isn’t great if you’re trying to keep radiation out.

Of course, it’s a bit of an open question as to whether or not any fallout shelter would have been useful in an attack. Graham T. Allison, who used to be the assistant secretary at the Department of Defense, once explained his thoughts on this to The New York Times. He said, “At least people would think they were doing something, even if it didn’t have any effect.” So, it was arguably more about feeling safe, rather than actually being safe.

If you’re directly at the heart of a nuclear explosion, then there’s probably nothing that will save you. But if you’re outside of the immediate radius, then a sealed bunker might make all the difference. In a big, crowded city like New York, there’d be a lot of scared people looking for protection.

The bunker itself led to its own safety concerns, given its aged state. Medications like Dextran had to go to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to be disposed of safely. And the sealed boxes of crackers couldn’t be opened, in case there were unknown germs inside. Even just walking across splintered wood and broken glass was dangerous.

Wider safety and security concerns meant the actual location of the shelter had to be kept away from the public. As fascinating as this treasure trove might be, it’s not somewhere anyone can just visit. You’ll have to settle for the words of the experts, like Yale-based historian John Lewis Gaddis.

Speaking to The Times about the bunker, Gaddis remarked, “It’s kind of unusual to find one fully intact — one that is rediscovered, almost in an archaeological sense. I don’t know of a recent example of that.” It’s a stark comparison to the moldy crackers removed from dismantled shelters elsewhere in the country. How did this one end up being so well-preserved?

It gets even stranger when you think how busy the Brooklyn Bridge is and how many people cross it every day. New York’s transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, described it as “eerie” how “this stuff was just sitting there” as thousands walked and drove overhead. It makes a change from the odd bottles and coins workers normally find.

Back in the 1950s and ’60s there’d have been regular training drills on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. A siren would have wailed and people would’ve rushed to the nearest shelter, if there was one. For people who lived through those times, the Brooklyn discovery brings the memories right back.

More than 17,000 fallout shelters were apparently registered in New York City. That meant there was room for more than 11 million New York residents. Each shelter was stocked with supplies, and many were inspected regularly by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to ensure they were in an appropriate state of preparedness.

After 1963 shelters started to become a less significant part of Cold War defense. That wasn’t because the threat was viewed as over, though. It was just that nuclear weapons were getting bigger. If they could wipe out an entire city in a single blast, no one was going to be safe even inside concrete walls.

So, existing nuclear bunkers became less relevant. That may be why one in a fairly well-hidden location inside the Brooklyn Bridge could so easily fall into obscurity. It wasn’t ever needed, so it was forgotten. And no one was likely to stumble into it accidentally when it wasn’t even signposted.

When it was built, some people called the Brooklyn Bridge the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Just a glance at the fantastic structure all but confirms they had the right idea, though its ingenuity isn’t confined to what you can see. Bear that in mind and just imagine what may be hiding under your feet the next time you cross a famous landmark.