Part 3, Chapter 15 Summary and Analysis

"At the Halfway Mark" picks up the story in America's centennial year, summarizing how the towers and anchorages are competed and emphasizing Roebling's absent presence as mason work gives way to stringing wire. The biggest surprise is awarding the wire contract not to the Roeblings, but for purely political reasons to an obscure and incompetent Brooklyn firm. The Brooklyn tower is finished in June of 1875 and New York's in July of 1876. Times have changed. The Panic of 1873 wipes out businesses and fills the streets with unemployed drifters. Europe sends its poor and hopeful. Simple, ingenious inventions make life simpler. Big corporations get bigger. Railroad tunnels and bridges are constructed. New York boasts the nation's tallest office building, the ten-story Western Union Telegraph Building, which is 50 feet shorter than the bridge tower. Havemeyer is dead, and Tweed is on the...