Between 1810 and 1850, the population of Brooklyn, New York, increased from about 3,000 to over 100,000.
Brooklyn residents who traveled to the island of Manhattan had to take a ferry across the East River. However, the river tended to freeze during the winter, and ferries were overcrowded during rush hour. Clearly, a new means of crossing was needed. In 1867, Henry Cruse Murphy, a former mayor of Brooklyn, proposed building a bridge. Two years later, construction began on what was to become one of the most extraordinary engineering feats in history.
