The Great Bridge (69 page)

The procession moved off, the “Dandy” Seventh Regiment and its band and a mounted police escort leading the way. Twenty-five carriages went rolling down Fifth to 14th Street, then east on 14th as far as Union Square, where they turned south again, down Broadway to City Hall. The greatest crowds anyone could remember seeing in New York lined the sidewalks and Chester A. Arthur, it would appear, was beloved by one and all. If he was not exactly a Jefferson or a Jackson nobody seemed to mind in the least.

It was one thirty when the procession wheeled into City Hall Park, where the press of people was almost beyond control. In another ten minutes Arthur and Cleveland had stepped down from their carriages and participated in a review of sorts. Then everyone formed up behind the Seventh Regiment, and with the band playing for all it was worth, everybody set off for the bridge on foot.

The historic ceremonial march to Brooklyn was made on the elevated promenade, but the roadways to either side of the promenade had already been opened to ticket holders and so thousands upon thousands of people lined the way. The band and soldiers went first, in route step as specified. Bayonets glinted in the sunshine and the music, whatever it was, had a decided effect on the dark-suited civilians. “It was a cheerful, jingling air which seemed to put life into the feet,” wrote a spectator.

Up on the New York tower a lone photographer was busily at work under a black hood.

Arthur, it was said, “trod the pathway with an elastic step” and “looked with evident admiration at the structure opening up to view.” (The next day a Broadway shoe merchant took space in the papers to announce that his “easy walking” shoes, made on patented lasts, had been “tested” at the opening of the bridge by President Arthur.) Cleveland was described as having a “wobbling gait,” like a London alderman.

Just before the New York tower the Seventh Regiment halted, formed into two lines at the right of the promenade, and presented arms as the President passed by. William Kingsley, who had been waiting with a delegation of trustees in the shadow of the arches, removed his hat and stepped forward to grasp the President’s hand. There was then a lively exchange of greetings and introductions, while the band played “Hail to the Chief” four times.

Guns were booming at Fort Hamilton and the Navy Yard as they all started out onto the main span. For Mayor Low and his Brooklyn reception committee, waiting beneath the opposite tower, only the heads of the lead men in the band could be seen as the procession approached—because of the gentle upward bow of the bridge. But as they came on, the heads gained shoulders and brass instruments. The oncoming figures not only grew larger as the distance narrowed, but more of each figure came steadily into view. They seemed to be coming up out of the planking of the promenade, the way approaching ships rise out of the horizon. Soon they had legs and feet and were on the downhill side of the span. Behind them, meanwhile, the solitary photographer on the New York tower had wheeled about 180 degrees and was back at work under his hood again. The band was playing full blast and the crowds on the carriageways to either side were cheering and waving as Arthur, “an Apollo in form,” trod by overhead. “The President ran his eye around the horizon with the air of one appreciating the happy combination of the works of God and man. He filled his lungs with the refreshing breeze…”

Just before the Brooklyn tower the soldiers again parted ranks for the others to pass through. Seth Low made the official greeting for the City of Brooklyn, the Marines presented arms, a signal flag was dropped nearby and instantly there was a crash of a gun from the
Tennessee.
Then the whole fleet commenced firing. Steam whistles on every tug, steamboat, ferry, every factory along the river, began to scream. More cannon boomed. Bells rang, people were cheering wildly on every side. The band played “Hail to the Chief” maybe six or seven more times, and as the New York
Sun
reported, “the climax of fourteen years’ suspense seemed to have been reached, since the President of the United States of America had walked dry shod to Brooklyn from New York.”

Under the arched roof of the great iron terminal some six thousand people were waiting. Enormous American flags hanging overhead were the only decorations but shafts of sunshine slanted through the long banks of windows and fell on the crowd like floodlights. The President and the Governor were to sit on a raised platform along the west side of the building, while directly opposite was a section for the trustees, city officials, clergy, and speakers of the day. Everyone else was packed onto a temporary wooden floor between these sections.

At the sight of Arthur “the great multitude in the station arose and gave vent to the wildest enthusiasm.” Handkerchiefs, parasols, and hats were waved in the air. The shouting even drowned out the band.

Presently James S. T. Stranahan began rapping for order with his cane and Bishop A. N. Littlejohn of Long Island stood up to offer a prayer.

All afternoon, as the speeches dragged on, thousands of men, women, and children went walking back and forth across the bridge, stopping now and then to exchange greetings with friends on neighboring housetops or to gaze down the smokestacks of the excursion steamers that floated slowly under the bridge with the outgoing tide. People were saying the ferries looked like water bugs from such a height. They waved to the crowds on the ferries and the crowds on the ferries waved back. Everybody seemed on a holiday. They joined arms. Some sang. Rooftops all along the river had been converted into “summer gardens,” in the expression of the day, where thousands more spent the afternoon drinking beer, singing, and enjoying the glorious sunshine.

What was it all about? What was everyone celebrating? The speakers of the day had a number of ideas. The bridge was a “wonder of Science,” an “astounding exhibition of the power of man to change the face of nature.” It was a monument to “enterprise, skill, faith, endurance.” It was also a monument to “public spirit,” “the moral qualities of the human soul,” and a great, everlasting symbol of “Peace.” The words used most often were “Science,” “Commerce,” and “Courage,” and some of the ideas expressed had the familiar ring of a Fourth of July oration. Still, everything considered, the speeches were quite appropriate on the whole and revealed much about the way people felt about the day and the bridge. The only real problem was that most of the audience never heard a word that was said, the big open-ended terminal being about the worst imaginable place to hold such a ceremony. There was no way to close off the din from outside and even under the best of circumstances the acoustics would have been miserable. For anybody sitting more than fifty feet from the speakers’ stand, which meant nearly everyone, it was more like watching men go through the motions of making a speech.

Kingsley, the first speaker, got up very slowly, his long, rigid figure seeming to unfold like a telescope, as someone remarked. He looked deadly serious the whole time and kept his head down as he read his speech. But the audience had its attention fixed on the ceiling to his right, where a flagstaff had come loose at one end and was swinging to and fro, its shiny brass spear aimed straight down. The people directly below were packed in so tightly that nobody could move out of the way and it was impossible to reach the spear. So there it stayed swinging ever so gently and silently as one by one the speakers went through their pantomime orations.

Mayor Low was next after Kingsley and as he stepped to the rostrum one well-dressed woman sitting nearby was heard to exclaim, “Why he is no more than a boy!” The
Eagle
said later he was more like the valedictorian of the day and complimented him on his excellent voice, which apparently some people could actually hear. True or not, President Arthur was seen to yawn behind his fan, then whisper something to Secretary of State Frelinghuysen, which made them both laugh, and farther down the line, Secretary of the Treasury Folger appeared to be taking a nap.

Mayor Low was not very long about what he had to say and Mayor Edson, who held his speech in kid gloves, took even less time, which may have accounted for the enormous cheer when he sat down. At that point Stranahan was about to introduce Hewitt, the main speaker, apparently having forgotten that Jules Levy, a cornet player, was supposed to be next on the program. But the smiling Levy stepped forward all the same and as the
Times
reported “put the great multitude in a good humor” by playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Secretary Folger was seen to wake up and on the last note the crowd cheered so mightily that Levy did “Hail Columbia” as an encore. Again there was an ovation, but when Levy looked as though he was going to play still one more time, Stranahan seized him by the arm and led him off the platform. The audience was greatly disappointed by this and Levy looked furious. When Stranahan started to introduce Hewitt, Levy, from off stage, began playing “Yankee-Doodle.” There was a roar of laughter and Chester A. Arthur appeared to be more pleased by this part of the program than any other. Levy took his time on the last notes, while Stranahan, a man with no music in his soul, according to one account, just stood glumly waiting.

About the time Stranahan finished introducing Hewitt, a shaft of sunlight had fallen on the Presidential head and neck, whereupon an Army officer appeared from somewhere with a lady’s parasol, which he held over the portly Arthur until the close of the exercises. The
World,
now a Democratic paper, said he looked like an Asiatic potentate under the parasol.

It was also remarked that Abram Hewitt looked pale and rather “delicate” when he got up to speak, and by the time he finished, the audience had grown tired and extremely restless. But then the final speaker, the Reverend Dr. Storrs, was standing where Hewitt had been, a handsome, vibrant figure with flowing gray locks, who obviously felt at home before such a vast assembly and who punctuated every sentence with a nod, from the waist up, as if driving home each statement with his forehead. Storrs spoke for nearly an hour.

All told, the speeches, prayers, and cornet solos ran to nearly three hours and the Bridge Company’s gold-embossed commemorative booklet containing the full text of everything said runs to 122 pages. Neither Chester Arthur nor Grover Cleveland said a word from the rostrum; they had not been asked to speak nor did anyone expect them to. They were there as honored guests only, to watch and listen and enjoy themselves. Nor did anyone make any public mention of the Queen’s birthday.

Hewitt’s address would be generally regarded in retrospect as the most successful of the day and was probably the finest he ever gave. He himself liked it so much that he had it published as a pamphlet three years later for his mayoralty campaign against Henry George and Theodore Roosevelt. But every speaker that afternoon seemed to be saying that the opening of the bridge was a national event, that it was a triumph of human effort, and that it somehow marked a turning point. It was the beginning of something new, and although none of them appeared very sure what was going to be, they were confident it would be an improvement over the past and present.

Henry Murphy, the assistant engineers, “the humblest workman,” were all praised by one speaker or another and Kingsley, Seth Low, and Hewitt each in his way extolled the genius of the Roeblings. Hewitt compared John A. Roebling to Leonardo da Vinci but said Colonel Roebling was an even greater engineer than his father. Then he solemnly declared that the name of Emily Warren Roebling, a name he had not been quite sure of the week before, would be forever “inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature, and with all that is wonderful in the constructive world of art.”

Hewitt said, too, that he could vouch for the manner in which all bridge business had been conducted, that no money had been stolen by Tweed, that the whole money raised had been “honestly expended,” which was the part of his speech that drew the warmest response from those up front and on the platform. And disregarding, or perhaps misunderstanding, Roebling’s skeptical remarks about progress since the Pyramids, he compared the $2.50 day’s pay of the average bridge worker with the wage scale of ancient Egypt, which he figured at two cents a day in 1883 money. That in Hewitt’s view was real progress. The bridge was a vindication, a heroic and monumental end result of modern industrialism, of labor and capital, of democracy, of new “methods, tools and laws of force”—of the nineteenth century. Even the
Times,
never an admirer of Abraham Hewitt, liked this part of his speech.

But it was the neatly combed little valedictorian, Seth Low, who came closer than anyone that day to expressing what was probably everyone’s most deeply felt response to the bridge. “The beautiful and stately structure fulfills the fondest hope,” he said. “…The impression upon the visitor is one of astonishment that grows with every visit. No one who has been upon it can ever forget it…. Not one shall see it and not feel prouder to be a man.”

The Chief Engineer had sat alone at his window, his field glasses trained on the bridge, watching the procession until the last top-hatted figures at the tag end passed beneath the arches of the Brooklyn tower. Then he had stretched out on his bed for a rest. Sometime near four Emily had returned, having left the Sands Street terminal midway through the speeches. He put on a Prince Albert coat and went downstairs on her arm, to the front parlor, where they took a seat on the sofa and waited for the first guests to arrive. But it was nearly five thirty before President Arthur alighted from a carriage at the canvas canopy outside. The crowd in the street by then was such that the police were just able to keep a narrow path open to the door.