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50 free The Brooklyn Bridge trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Brooklyn Bridge trivia begins with the family that built it: John Roebling, the Prussian-born engineer killed by tetanus before a stone was laid; his son Washington, crippled by caisson disease; and Emily Warren Roebling, who carried the work for a decade and crossed first with a rooster in her lap. The quiz covers the caissons and the 'Great Blowout', the bends, the 27 dead, Tammany Hall, and J. Lloyd Haigh's fraudulent wire that still hangs in the design margins. Then the structure and the spectacle: the neo-Gothic towers taller than anything but Trinity Church, Rosendale cement, four cables of 5,282 wires, the wine vaults under the anchorage, the 1,595-foot span, opening day with President Arthur, the fatal stampede a week later, and Jumbo leading 21 elephants across for Barnum. Later questions cover jumpers from Odlum to Brodie, 'selling' the bridge, tolls abolished in 1911, cable cars, elevated trains and trolleys until 1950, the Bethlehem Steel recabling, the 1983 centennial, Hart Crane, Ken Burns, the al-Qaeda blowtorch plot, the Brooklyn Banks skate park and the 2021 bike lane. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Brooklyn Bridge and the three Roeblings, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit anyone who has walked the promenade; the expert tier reaches Janes & Kirtland and Inc. magazine.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which body of water does the Brooklyn Bridge span?
The East River
It was the first fixed crossing of the river, linking Manhattan and Brooklyn, then separate cities.
Q 02On what date did the Brooklyn Bridge open?
24 May 1883
On the first day 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed.
Q 03What was the length of the bridge's main span, making it the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened?
1,595.5 feet (486 m)
The deck sits 127 feet above mean high water; the whole structure between curbs is about 6,016 feet.
Q 04Before the Brooklyn Bridge, its designer had built a suspension bridge over which river between Cincinnati and Covington?
The Ohio
He had also built the Niagara Suspension Bridge and the Delaware Aqueduct in Pennsylvania.
Q 05How did John Roebling die in 1869, before construction began?
Tetanus after a ferry crushed his foot
His crushed toes were amputated during final surveys in June 1869; the infection killed him the next month.
Q 06How old was Washington Roebling when he took over as chief engineer after his father's death?
32
He was a Civil War veteran and had studied caisson foundations in Europe.
Q 07What illness left Washington Roebling paralysed and unable to visit the site for most of the construction?
Caisson disease (the bends)
Working in compressed air in the caissons shattered his health; the project physician Andrew Smith coined the term 'caisson disease'.
Q 08Which member of the Roebling family assisted the bedridden chief engineer for over a decade and is honoured on the bridge's plaque?
Emily Warren, his wife
She later earned a law certificate from NYU and wrote the acclaimed 1899 essay 'A Wife's Disabilities'.
Q 09What did Emily Roebling carry as she became the first person to cross the finished bridge by carriage?
A rooster
It was a sign of victory; officially she was the first to cross before the opening ceremony.
Q 10Which political machine controlled the New York Bridge Company that oversaw construction?
Tammany Hall
Boss Tweed, a major landowner, had a personal interest in the project's completion.
Q 11In which year did construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begin?
1870
It took thirteen years, prolonged by controversy and the novelty of the design.
Q 12What are caissons, in the context of the bridge's construction?
Underwater timber boxes in which workers dug foundations under compressed air
Made of southern yellow pine and later filled with concrete, they were sunk to bedrock beneath each tower.
Q 13What was the 'Great Blowout' early in the bridge's construction?
Q 21The towers are built of limestone, granite and what third material?
Rosendale cement
The granite blocks were shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, and delivered by schooner.
Q 22What were the vaults under the Manhattan anchorage rented out for from 1876?
Storing wine
They stayed at a constant 60 °F; a fading inscription found in 1978 read 'Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long.'
Q 23Technically, what kind of structure is the Brooklyn Bridge?
A hybrid cable-stayed suspension span
A fire in the Brooklyn caisson's timber roof
Repairs delayed work for months; the Brooklyn caisson finally reached 44.5 feet in March 1871.
Q 14How many cases of decompression sickness did physician Andrew Smith treat between January and May 1872?
110
Three workers died of it; Washington Roebling halted digging on the Manhattan side rather than go deeper.
Q 15Roughly how many men are estimated to have died building the bridge?
27
By 1876 three had fallen from the towers and nine died in other accidents; twelve more died in a stampede a week after opening.
Q 16What did the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh do that permanently reduced the bridge's safety margin?
Substituted inferior-quality wire in the cables
Only five of eighty rings tested met standards; Roebling had over-designed the truss six to eight times, so it was still far stronger than needed.
Q 17Roughly how much was Haigh estimated to have made from his wire fraud?
$300,000
To avoid scandal he was not fired but made to pay for the extra good wire himself; the tainted cables were finally replaced in 1986.
Q 18How many main cables support the bridge's deck?
Four
Each is 15.75 inches thick and contains 5,282 galvanised steel wires bundled in 19 strands, the first bundling in a suspension bridge.
Q 19What architectural style are the bridge's stone towers?
Neo-Gothic
Each tower has a pair of pointed arches through which the roadways run.
Q 20How tall are the bridge's two suspension towers above mean high water?
278 feet (85 m)
When finished they were taller than every building in the city except the spire of Trinity Church, at 279 feet.
It has both vertical suspender cables and about 400 diagonal stays from the towers.
Q 24Under what earlier official name was the span known until 1915?
The New York and Brooklyn Bridge, or East River Bridge
The city government passed a bill to adopt the familiar name in January 1915.
Q 25Which US president crossed the bridge at its opening ceremony and shook hands with Brooklyn's mayor Seth Low?
Chester A. Arthur
New York mayor Franklin Edson accompanied him.
Q 26What tragedy occurred on 30 May 1883, six days after the opening?
A stampede killed at least twelve people
A woman falling down a stairway on the Brooklyn approach triggered the crush.
Q 27Which showman led 21 elephants across the bridge in May 1884 to prove it was safe?
P. T. Barnum
Jumbo led the parade, calming doubts about the bridge's stability while advertising the circus.
Q 28How much did the Brooklyn Bridge cost to build?
$15.5 million
Brooklyn paid two-thirds; that is about $518 million in 2025 dollars.
Q 29Who was the first person to jump from the bridge, on 19 May 1885?
Robert Emmet Odlum
Brodie's famous 1886 leap is doubted; cartoonist Otto Eppers jumped, survived and was acquitted of attempted suicide in 1910.
Q 30Steve Brodie became famous for supposedly doing what in July 1886?
Jumping from the bridge and surviving
He was briefly arrested, though there is doubt he actually jumped.