Toward a New Brooklyn

This chapter recounts how the people of Brooklyn celebrated the end of the Civil War and mourned the death of a president in April 1865, which are epochal events in American history. It discusses the process of the state legislature that passed State Senator Henry C. Murphy's bill on authorizing the building of the East River bridge. In the years that followed, thousands of people crossed the river each day through the bridge on foot, in carriages and wagons, and aboard cable cars. The chapter highlights how the East River bridge, dubbed by locals as the Eighth Wonder of the World, and Brooklyn itself attracted the admiration of many who did not need statistics to know something grand had happened. It then looks at Brooklyn's rapid growth and its continuing attraction to those who worked in New York City in the years following the completion of the bridge.