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Because so many of the great technological leaps were accomplished in the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, examination of the other East River bridges can be - and probably will have to be - shorter. Thus consideration of the Williamsburg Bridge can be limited to two basic themes: the questions of aesthetics which arose as a result of the design of the bridge and the continuing changes brought on by immigration and urban growth. The impact of new technology is significant primarily in the use of the bridge as a link in the newly electrified mass transit system rather than in its construction.

Even before the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge leading citizens of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn began to push for a bridge that would connect their community to Manhattan. 19th Century maps of New York show clearly how growth in Williamsburg was separate from the early center of Brooklyn due to Wallabout Bay and its surrounding marshland which lie between them. By the late 19th Century the community was made up mostly of upwardly mobile German and Irish immigrants and first generation native born who had been able to escape the tenement slums of Manhattan. Despite being annexed by Brooklyn in 1855, Williamsburg continued to see itself as a separate community with interests more allied to New York. Because of geography, the citizens of Williamsburg realized that the benefits of the Brooklyn Bridge would not easily flow to their community.

In 1897, after more than a decade of delays caused by political and financial problems, a design for a suspension bridge was completed by Leffert L. Buck and construction began. By that time traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge had exceeded all expectations and ferry traffic hadn't diminished at all. To handle this burgeoning growth, the design specifications called for a bridge built with two levels to handle six lanes for trolleys, two lanes for carriages and a pedestrian walkway all of which would require a deck half again as wide as the Brooklyn Bridge. The needs of a growing city and developments in transportation technology were placing greater demands on bridges in New York.

Buck's design was one in which the design specifications were well met, but aesthetic considerations seem to be secondary. For the first time in a bridge of this size steel would be used for the entire bridge, including the towers which would rise 350 feet - 80 feet taller than the towers on the Brooklyn Bridge. As this was one of the first times steel was used in this way, the design of the towers is conservative, relating more to earlier designs such as the Eiffel Tower which was built of wrought iron. The result is a vertical truss with an ungainly profile which compares unfavorably to the monumental gothic towers of the Brooklyn Bridge or the elegant steel frames used in later bridges. Adding to the bridge's aesthetic shortcomings, Buck felt the increased load specifications required a massive stiffening truss which runs 40 feet high the length of the bridge. Finally, the side spans of the bridge is supported in a straight line by steel viaducts rather than suspended from the cables. The result is a span which does not have the continuous graceful curve that is usually associated with suspension bridges. The design for the Williamsburg bridge therefore can be seen as one in which the use of material in a new way and the tremendous load requirements of a growing city led to a bridge which is simply functional - nothing more. Writing in Scientific American shortly before the completion of the bridge, one critic stated that one can look over the entire bridge "without finding a single detail which suggests a controlling motive, either in its design or fashioning other than bald utility."

Student work on the Williamsburg bridge should focus in part on this conflict between aesthetics and "bald utility." Photographs of all the East River bridges appear in Sharon Reier's excellent The Bridges of New York, but students can probably best judge the comparative beauty of the various bridges when they go to see them. One of the assignments due after the trip should be for students to choose which bridge they think is the most beautiful and which they think is the most ugly and explain why. Discussions prior to the trip as to what factors add to or detract from the beauty of a bridge will serve to provide students with a vocabulary to explain their position. Students should be consider the influence new and relatively untried materials can have on a designer's confidence in his ability to create forms that are graceful as well as functional.

One unquestionably positive effect of technological advances on the construction of the Williamsburg Bridge was the decreased time of construction: only seven years - less than half the time required for the Brooklyn Bridge. Upon completion it played a significant role in the evolution of the immigrant communities in New York. Viewed initially by the German and Irish residents of Williamsburg as bringing the economic benefits of easy access to Manhattan, the bridge was ultimately more important as an outlet for the Eastern European Jewish immigrant community in the overcrowded slums of the Lower East Side. Within the next few decades Williamsburg and adjacent Brownsville became thriving Jewish enclaves while the Germans moved on to Richmond Hill and Jamaica, Queens. Thus, a bridge built in response to urban growth ended up influencing the social and ethnic patterns of that growth.