Brooklyn Bridge a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display. Since the New York and Brooklyn Bridge was the only one across the East River at that time, it was also called East River Bridge. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches
Brooklyn Bridge (Gleizes) most treasured themes: "the city which draws life from the river". Already, in his 1913 publication "The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations", Guillaume Apollinaire drew parallels between the work of Gleizes and the realization of metal constructions such as bridges: Gleizes stated his admiration for the Brooklyn Bridge in the first interview after his arrival in the United States, comparing it to the noblest achievements of European architecture. The Brooklyn Bridge was a key component of the New York landscape for the Ashcan School, though it hadn't held for them the fascination that it did for the generation of modern artists