The Williamsburg Bridge Opens

On December 19, 1903, Mayor Seth Low led a military parade up Broadway and over a brand-new bridge to meet Brooklyn Borough President John Swanstrom's delegation coming the other way. The two sides shook hands at 2:43 in the afternoon and declared the Williamsburg Bridge open, seven and a half years after construction began. Chief engineer Leffert L. Buck and architect Henry Hornbostel had built a 7,308-foot crossing whose 1,600-foot main span edged out the Brooklyn Bridge to become the longest suspension span on earth, the first of that size hung from steel towers instead of masonry. That night fireworks went up over the East River while two hundred boats paraded below. Within months, the walkway built wide enough for pushcarts was jammed with Jewish peddlers and families moving out of the packed Lower East Side into Brooklyn, and the New York Tribune had already given the crossing a nickname that stuck.