One of the 19th century’s most brilliant engineers, inventors, and successful manufacturers, John Roebling immigrated to the US from Germany in 1831. He became wealthy and acclaimed for bridge design and construction, and by 1867 had begun work on his masterpiece, the Brooklyn Bridge. Richard Haw, author of Engineering America: The Life and Times of John A. Roebling (May 2020), as well as two earlier books on the visual and cultural history of the bridge across time, will place this transcendent marriage of masonry and steel cable into the context of Roebling’s life’s work.
Richard Haw
Richard Haw is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. He is the author of Engineering America: The Life and Times of John A. Roebling (Oxford University Press, 2020) as well as Art of the Brooklyn Bridge: A Visual History (Routledge, 2012) and The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History (Rutgers University Press, 2008).