In May 2008, New York City commemorated the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge with a spectacular five-day birthday celebration featuring fireworks, light shows, musical and dance performances, a Brooklyn Bridge film series, walking tours, a series of lectures and readings at the Brooklyn Historical Society and Manhattan’s Surrogate’s Court, a bicycle “Tour de Brooklyn”, the opening of a new pedestrian connection between the Brooklyn Bridge and DUMBO, and a telectroscope connection to London, England.

Text and drawing by M.D. Morris, P.E., F. ASCE.

Worldwide recognition allows that the George Washington Bridge is an outstanding symbol of the City of New York. It is one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of Gotham, just as San Francisco boasts the Golden Gate Bridge; Australia, its Sydney Harbour Bridge; and London, its Tower Bridge.

The year 2006 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Augustus Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge and one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent civil engineers. To celebrate the occasion, the ASCE History and Heritage Committee and the New Jersey and Metropolitan Sections sponsored the Roebling Symposium in Brooklyn from October 26-29, 2006. The symposium included an icebreaker reception at Polytechnic University, a symposium at the Marriott Hotel at Brooklyn Bridge, a bus tour to Roebling-related sites in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including the ASCE landmarked Roebling Aqueduct Bridge over the Delaware River, and a tour of the Brooklyn Bridge.

On June 22, 2003, the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC) and The Daily News organized the Williamsburg Bridge 100th Birthday Celebration at Continental Army Plaza Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The day-long family-oriented celebration marked the centennial of a beloved city landmark and featured engineers and historians leading walking tours of the Bridge, a procession across the bridge with the original flag flown off the last cable run in 1902, a bridge photo exhibit highlighting construction laborers; music and food inspired by the neighborhood’s diverse ethnicity, and even a flatbed-size birthday cake topped with a sugar sculpture of the Bridge.