Hello, I'm Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast with a very special gift for my listeners this holiday season.

While my last new show of 2023 on Delmonicose went live last week, this week we are offering an episode from the Bowery Boys Archive to round out our series of tie-in shows to HBO's The Guilded Age.

The character of Emily Robling and the story of how she worked to complete construction

on the Brooklyn Bridge in the face of her husband's illness was a fascinating plotline in

season two. In this episode, Greg and Tom share the entire story of the Roebling family,

John, his son Washington, and his wife, Emily, as they

all contributed to create one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century. And as an extra

special treat, Greg and Tom are joined by Chris Robling, Washington and Emily's great-great-grandson,

who keeps their legacy alive to this day.

Hi there, welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young. And this is Tom Myers, and today

we're paying a visit to one of the great icons of New York City, the East River Bridge,

otherwise known as the Brooklyn Bridge.

But here's a little riddle for you. Today's show is not strictly about the Brooklyn Bridge,

which took more than 13 years to complete and opened 140 years ago on May 24, 1883. A generation of New Yorkers and Brooklynites grew up watching its towers slowly rise over the East River, and its suspension cable span out to support a road which would link the two great cities.

Thousands of people were employed in some way during its construction, and more than two dozen

people died, and many others were injured while building it.

The bridge represented the rise of a great metropolitan area and signaled that New York

was about to become one of the world's greatest cities.

But on today's show, we're going to look at the story from a new angle.

We're going to look at the Brooklyn Bridge as a kind of family tree.

There's a 1951 plaque upon the bridge, which reads,

The Builders of the Bridge,

...