The opening ceremony of New York City’s…

The opening ceremony of New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge is attended by several thousand people and many ships are present in the East Bay for the occasion.

President Chester A. Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson cross the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and are greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reach the Brooklyn-side towe , on May 24, 1883.

Arthur shakes hands with Washington Roebling at the latter's home, after the ceremony.

Roebling is unable to attend the ceremony (and in fact will rarely visit the site again), but holds a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening.

Further festivity includes the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display.
Washington Roebling completes  Brooklyn Bridge, in 1883.

One of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, designed by Roebling's father John, it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River.

With a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 meters), it is the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge.

Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and as the East River Bridge, it had been dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name from an earlier January 25, 1867, letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and will be formally so named by the city government in 1915.

Washington Roebling, like his father, had also suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of decompression sickness shortly after the beginning of construction on January 3, 1870.

This condition, first called "caisson disease" by the project physician Andrew Smith, had afflicted many of the workers working within the caissons.

After Roebling's debilitating condition had left him unable to physically supervise the construction firsthand, his wife Emily Warren Roebling had stepped in and provided the critical written link between her husband and the engineers on site.

Under her husband's guidance, Emily had studied higher mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction.

She had spent the next eleven years assisting Washington Roebling helping to supervise the bridge's construction.

When iron probes underneath the caisson found the bedrock to be even deeper than expected, Roebling had halted construction due to the increased risk of decompression sickness.

He later deemed the aggregate overlying the bedrock thirty feet (nine meters) below it to be firm enough to support the tower base, and construction continued.

Harbor pilot Joseph Henderson had been called upon as an expert seaman to determine the height of the water span of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement.

The granite blocks had been quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the Bodwell Granite Company, delivered from Maine to New York by schooner.