It was in the summer of 1869 that John A. Roebling died. The second day of January, 1870, saw the actual work of construction begun, when laborers started to clear away to prepare for the foundations of the Brooklyn tower. From that day forward, through a baker's dozen of years, there was no rest, though there was plenty of interruption. Until the job was ended Washington A. Roebling simply lived the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a colossal job, punctuated with changes and problems and complications, but it went forward. The landmarks of a bygone age, old houses of historic memory on the water fronts of both cities, vanished silently and where they had been, by and by there grew piles of masonry to form the approaches. From the huge caissons over against either shore rose the towers, tall and grim, which were to carry the cables. In due time they stood complete, with their broad bases welded to the rock by an ingenious bond of stone and concrete in the river's bed, and their crests nearly three hundred feet above the top of the tide. A hundred and nineteen feet--and three inches, to be precise--above the water opened the two tall arches in each tower, stretching upward one hundred and seventeen feet in air. It was through these the bridge proper was to pass, with its gangways for horse and foot and railway traffic. [Sidenote: COULD THOSE SLENDER TOWERS CARRY THE GREAT LOAD?] The hurrying people of New York and Brooklyn watched the thing grow and wondered fearfully whether the slender towers would stand the strain. In Harper's Magazine for May, 1883, now itself yellowed by age, is an exhaustive article concerning the Brooklyn Bridge, in which one is told at length and with an engineer's exactness, the steps by which the achievement was brought, after thirteen laborious years, to proud completion. Even to the curious layman the details are no longer of insistent interest. One thing is emphasized, however, which well as we know it now can never cease to hold the mind in a certain wonder--that all the weight and solidity and massiveness are in the towers, the foundations and the long expanses of stone work, which stretching inland nearly a thousand feet, serve to guard and strengthen the anchorage for the cables which are the working force. The rest is wire, for the most part; wire, slender by contrast and against the background of the sky, but endowed with great strength by care and skill in fabrication. John A. Roebling and his son had staked their name and their future on the strength and quality of Roebling wire.