What was the purpose of building the Brooklyn bridge?

Answer 1

Before the Brooklyn Bridge was built, there was no way to cross the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan, or Manhattan to Brooklyn, except by boat. Traveling between them was extremely inconvenient.

There was a ferry system, but it was unable to accommodate large numbers of people. The ferries were simply too small and too slow, and there were not enough of them (and adding more of them to the fleet would have overcrowded traffic on the river). So it was impossible for people to commute back and forth on a significant scale.

Furthermore, in the winter, the East River sometimes froze, making ferry travel impossible. Since the ice rarely froze solid enough to walk over, traveling over the river was virtually impossible. It was said that it was easier to travel from Albany to Manhattan (Albany is the state capital, in upstate New York) than it was to travel between Brooklyn and Manhattan in the winter.

The Brooklyn Bridge changed all that. It made commuting much easier; it was now possible for large numbers of people to live in Brooklyn, but work in Manhattan. This was impossible before the bridge was built, since the ferry system wasn't equipped to carry large numbers of commuters at once, and because in the winter, ferry service was limited or nonexistent.

It is not a coincidence that the five boroughs -- which at the time were separate counties or cities -- incorporated into one city in 1898, only 5 years after the bridge opened. The Brooklyn Bridge helped bind the boroughs together into one city.