Roebling: The Company Town That Built the Brooklyn Bridge

The village of Roebling, New Jersey, was built from scratch by John A. Roebling's Sons Company, the wire-rope manufacturer whose cables hold up the Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, and dozens of other iconic spans. The company began a vast new plant here in nineteen oh four, beside its Trenton works, and laid out an entire town in nineteen oh five around it: worker housing, a church, a school, a store, and a park, all designed to keep the workforce close and loyal.

At its peak the plant employed thousands of workers who drew the steel wire that held up the great suspension bridges of the twentieth century. The company eventually merged into larger conglomerates and the plant closed in nineteen seventy-four. Roebling today is a National Register historic district, its brick row houses and factory buildings a remarkably intact example of American industrial paternalism.