The second place that we wanted good weather for was the Brooklyn Bridge. We wanted to be able to walk across that historic structure. When Tim was being homeschooled during his grade school years, PBS had a
seven part series directed by Ric Burns on New York City. If you can get it at your library, it is worth watching. I was fascinated by nearly any history program, but this one was special. Tim loved it too.
Soon after that, Ken Burns did a
documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge, which we also watched. Tim, with the help of some of his siblings, constructed a lego version of the bridge, complete with actual suspension holding up the deck of the bridge.
That year for Christmas, the person who drew Tim's name gave him a poster of New York City. I think that was just a year before the 9/11 attack and the World Trade Center dominates the sky line.
So our plans for the rest of the day included walking the Bridge, seeing the WTC site, and then eating Ukranian. More about that later.
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| Tim in front of the support closest to Manhattan. Chuck and Becca in the background. |
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| Becca taking pics of Manhattan skyline. |
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| Manhattan skyline |
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| The bridge has lanes for walkers and bikers and there were a lot of people on the bridge. |
We only walked across from Manhattan to Brooklyn and then took the subway which goes under the river back to Manhattan. On both sides of the bridge there is an area around the massive suspension supports that has information about the bridge. As you move around the support structure there are signs that tell the history of the bridge, the way it was constructed, and interesting trivia.
The bridge was designed by John Roebling, who was injured in an accident while surveying the site in preparation for building the bridge. He died ten days later of tetanus. His son, Washington Roebling, took over the task of building the bridge.
In order to have a firm foundation for the bridge, sand and sediment needed to be removed from the bottom of the river in order to reach the rock layer below. Large boxes, big enough for several men to work inside of, were lowered with the open side down, into the river. Air was pumped into those boxes in order to displace the water and then the boxes were sunk to the bottom of the river. The pressure of the air inside the boxes had to be high in order to keep the water out so that the men could steadily dig out the sediment. In those days they did not know how slowly to bring the men out of that pressurized environment in order to avoid getting air bubbles in their blood stream from coming back to normal air pressure to quickly. The result was a disease called Cassions disease, or the bends.
Washington Roebling was a hands-on builder and he contracted this disease early in the building of the bridge. He became home bound. He and his wife, Emily lived in an apartment that overlooked the bridge site, and Emily took over the day to day operations of the construction while Washington watched from his window.
On the support that is closest to Brooklyn, there is a large bronze plaque in memory of Emily's contribution to the building of the bridge.
When we returned to Manhattan we decided to walk over to the site of the World Trade Center. The area was completely fenced with no visual access because they did not want people to see the memorial before its opening a couple of weeks later. We did go to a memorial store front that had exhibits with the story of 9/11 and drawings of the new memorial. People were very quiet in there, surprised by the strength of emotion that returns so readily even after ten years.
Becca's friend Katelyn had told her of a Ukranian Restaurant,
Veselka, near that area. They sold pierogi, or vereniki, but different than the vereniki that we are accustomed to. They had seven different fillings available. You could order a plate of them in any assortment of fillings you chose, so Becca and I both ordered all seven.
There were potato, sweet potato, sauerkraut and mushroom, arugula and goat cheese, spinach with cheese, cheese, and meat pierogi, served not with ham gravy, but with grilled onions, applesauce, and sour cream.
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| Becca's plate |
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| Chuck also ordered pierogi, but skipped the arugula/goat cheese flavor, and Tim had beef stroganoff. |
Following our meal we began to think about the next day. There was rain in the forecast, so we thought we would do some indoor activites culminating with a play. We'd been told that cheaper tickets are sold on the day of the performance in Times Square.
I wanted to see Times Square at night when it was not raining, so we went there after supper to scout out where those cheaper tickets would be sold the next day. Times Square is like nothing I've ever seen before.
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| whole buildings lit up with moving advertisements and messages |
There was one place we walked where everyone was staring at the same building and taking pictures. I was hoping that it wasn't something awful that they wanted to capture. It wasn't. There was a camera somewhere that was doing a live feed of the crowd on to the lit side of the building. They were taking pictures of themselves projected on a building in Times Square!
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| Tim getting some pics. |
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