Brooklyn Rising, Part 2: The Long Bridge
Crisp, Cromwell helped solve one of Baltimore’s biggest intrastate commerce problems in 1856
Through the early part of Baltimore’s history its food markets were stocked by local producers who had the means to get their crops into the city. Some farmers would ride their horse-drawn wagons for days traversing hundreds of miles just to get their harvest to into town.
The arrival of truck farming in the mid-1800s gave producers a huge boost, and agriculturally driven Anne Arundel County farmers now had a way to get their produce and livestock into the city much faster and more reliably. Before trucks came along farmers would haul their harvest and livestock via horse-drawn wagons to the shores of the Patapsco, where they would load boats to carry them into the city’s harbor for sale at markets like Mount Vernon, Lexington and Broadway. Trucks made the job easier and more convenient, but farmers from Annapolis up through Brooklyn still endured a long ride to sell their crops.
Farmers with resources could travel west to Linthicum and take the Patapsco Ferry Company’s boats from Hammonds Ferry across the Patapsco River to Ferry Bar on Light Street. It worked, but there were sometimes long waits and limits to how much could be ferried across. Alternatively they could take the long way around crossing smaller bridges along the way, some with tolls, into Baltimore’s markets. But that route was often more tedious than loading sloops at the river. In later years they would travel across the Harmans Bridge on the border of Linthicum and Baltimore County.
John Cromwell, a wealthy farmer and landowner in Brooklyn and part owner in a real estate venture, The Patapsco Company, had a unique idea. He and his business partner, Richard O. Crisp, proposed a privately funded toll bridge across the Patapsco. They needed the state’s permission to build across the river, but the idea quickly gained favor, especially among farmers.
Crisp worked with the Anne Arundel County delegation in the House of Delegates and sought the Maryland legislature’s permission to build a wooden drawbridge roughly one mile long across the Patapsco River from the terminus of Light Street at the southernmost tip of Baltimore — well known then as Ferry Bar — to the emerging village of Brooklyn. It would provide a vital connection between Baltimore and Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel Delegate William H. Dorsey introduced a bill and it was approved by the Maryland General Assembly in 1856. In exchange for permission to build the bridge the legislature required Crisp to build it and keep it in good working order at his own expense. Additionally he needed to ensure that the bridge had a draw that would allow boats to pass as necessary day or night — without a toll charge. The legislature was not about to have a bridge builder dictate the cost of commerce across Baltimore’s waterways. However costs related to pedestrian and horse-drawn traffic would be the domain of the owner, and Crisp and the state settled on the cost of tolls to cross the bridge. That caveat would become a bone of contention in later years, but at the outset the state and Crisp viewed the agreement as a win-win proposition.
The only opposition to the bridge came from the proprietors of Spring Gardens, a marina and resort across the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch near present day Swann Park in South Baltimore. The owners of the posh waterfront resort worried that the bridge would impede access to the resort’s popular wharf, a concern that proved unfounded. Indeed, Spring Gardens eventually embraced the bridge and even went so far as to take out advertisements in local newspapers suggested patrons take the bridge to visit their resort.
Crisp’s Three-year Deadline
The state required that the construction begin within 18 months of approval and be finished within 36 months, so Crisp started building the toll bridge right away. He hired wharf construction specialists J.N. Ely & Brothers to drive the piles that would support the structure. He built the bridge 16 feet wide, as the state required, and ensured it was durable enough to withstand constant, rigorous use. It was built with white pine cut from Cromwell’s woods along Belle Grove Road. It took just a little more than three months to complete the construction, and it terminated at the site of Acton’s Park and included several wharfs that extended out from various sections.
The bridge, which spanned nearly a mile on wooden pilings, connected with the Old Annapolis Road on the Patapsco’s south shore, a well-established local road with connections to all the major roads in Anne Arundel County. The State also required a draw in the bridge’s center to allow large vessels to pass through the channel, and Crisp built the draw using a coal-fired steam engine. The bridge was a time saver for local travelers. When traveling northwest into the city it would shave two miles off a trip, the Baltimore Sun estimated. A trip to the center of the city saved travelers between two-and-a-half and three miles. People traveling to the eastern part of the city, when coupled with the City Block Ferry boat, would save four miles.
The bridge took on many names over its lifespan. Before it was built the legislature referred to it as the “Baltimore and Patapsco Bridge.” The Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Gazette and the Annapolis Capital alternated between calling it the “Patapsco Bridge” and the “Ferry Bar Bridge.” Locals sometimes called it the “Brooklyn Bridge.” But as time passed it became most commonly referred to as “The Long Bridge,” and the name stuck until streetcar tracks were laid many decades later and new owner Baltimore City redubbed it “The Light Street Bridge.”
The Long Bridge was an important component of Crisp and Cromwell’s plan to grow the area. The blueprints for the town of Brooklyn were drawn, and the bridge was supposed to fuel the town’s growth by opening a more direct path between Baltimore and Brooklyn. Specifically it was intended to allow the easier flow of commerce between Baltimore, Anne Arundel County and as far south as Annapolis. People would be able to live and work in either Brooklyn or Baltimore with shorter commutes in both directions. On paper it worked, but as a practical matter the tolls that Cromwell and Crisp charged, which were hastily approved by the state legislature, proved a burdensome for many, especially local businesses. The costs for crossing the Long Bridge when it opened were:
- Foot passengers: six cents
- Horse and rider: 12 and a half cents
- Cart and wagon with two horses, mules or oxen: 25 cents
- Cart and wagon with four horses, mules or oxen: 35 cents
- Pleasure carriage with one horse: 18 and three-quarter cents
- Pleasure carriage with two horses: 37 cents
- Pleasure carriage with four horses: 75 cents
- Horses, mules or cattle: eight cents per head
- Sheep, swine, etc: six cents per head
For the average Baltimore person these costs were steep. Six cents in 1856 had a relative value of $1.75 in 2019 U.S. dollars, according to Samuel H. Williamson of the economic aggregating firm MeasuringWorth. Twenty-five cents in 1856 was equal to $7.30 in 2019. That’s especially expensive when you consider that the average monthly wage for Marylanders in 1850 was $28, according to Ancestry.com.
Crossing the bridge was expensive, but it nonetheless took on almost mythic proportions in the area. It became a community gathering place for events and weekend excursions. It was a good fishing spot, and entire families would pack picnic lunches and spend the day fishing from the side of the bridge. At dusk they would gather up their things and go home with a basket of perch, sunfish and rockfish. It also offered an impressive view of the rowing competitions held by Spring Gardens, whose “Patapsco Navy” was a popular attraction of the time.
In a look back at the since-departed bridge Baltimore Sun columnist B. Letrobe Weston waxed nostalgic in 1932 about his experiences on the Long Bridge.
“Many a Saturday, with two or three companions, I made a day of it on the bridge or in its vicinity,” Weston wrote. “We had discovered a good fishing ground on a disused, decaying pier that jutted from the northern, or city, shore, a short distance from the end of the bridge. Many of the planks that formed the flooring had disappeared, leaving wide spaces that made walking a somewhat hazardous performance; but that meant little to active youngsters. With a good supply of bait we hung our lines over the end of a dilapidated structure, or down between the supported piles, and the hours passed quickly as the white and yellow perch and sunfish accumulated in our baskets.
“From the pier, in addition to fishing, we were able to watch the rowers from the boat clubs that were then active on the Patapsco,” Weston added. “The scene of these, when held on the Patapsco, was the tidewater area above or westward of the Long Bridge, known as Spring Gardens. Spectators by the thousands lined the bridge and stood or sat on gaily decorated barges anchored in the stream, while crowded steam yachts and pleasure boats followed the course of the race from start to finish.”
Given its unique nature the bridge gave people better access to sporting events of the day. Skulling on the Patapsco was very popular, as were bird and skeet shooting and baseball at Acton’s Park at the foot of the Long Bridge in Brooklyn. The events transcended economic and cultural classes facilitating a mixture people that might not have happened otherwise. Further, these events, as well as the pleasure resorts that dotted the shores of Anne Arundel County, were so popular that people tended to disregard the relatively high cost of crossing the bridge.
At the receiving end of the bridge profits were Cromwell and Crisp. The toll proceeds were collected by Cromwell daily from the bridge keeper, Weston recalled. He depositing the money, almost entirely pennies, in a tight canvas bag and his horse and carriage brought it back across the bridge. It was a well-paying commercial venture for the two business partners and it had grown beyond its original purpose of simply providing a shorter, more economical means of transporting crops from their respective farms to Baltimore. But other farmers still paid the tolls, some as much as $1,000 per year, which in 2019 dollars would be more than $24,000. Some were outraged, choosing to go several miles north to Harmans Bridge near Linthicum Heights, or, when the Patapsco froze over in the winter, carrying their goods across the frozen surface, and, Weston said, jeering at Cromwell as they did.
The Toll of the Tolls
The costs for those tolls were being passed along to produce-buying consumers in Baltimore, and that eventually raised the hackles of Baltimore politicians. Fed up, Baltimore City offered the Patapsco Company $40,000 for the bridge in 1878 with the intent of turning it into a free bridge. Cromwell and Crisp declined the offer. The Maryland General Assembly, which gave The Patapsco Company the authority to build the Long Bridge in the first place, then approved legislation permitting Baltimore City to buy the bridge, or, if unable to reach an agreement, to build a free bridge instead. After considerable political and public pressure the two agreed to a lesser deal for the bridge, $35,000, and Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County jointly purchased it and immediately eliminated the tolls. There was now a free bridge over the Patapsco River. In 1884 the Baltimore City telegraph office strung a telegraph cable across the bridge to provide the city with a direct line to the old hospital in Curtis Bay.
The bridge continued to operate as usual for more than a decade, albeit more cheaply for travelers. Baltimore City set aside funds to refurbish and completed those upgrades in the spring of 1891. Shortly after its use was surging. The opening of the American Sugar Refinery plant and the South Baltimore Car Wheel Factory in Curtis Bay had increased the number of people commuting into Brooklyn and Curtis Bay to the point where some influential Baltimore businessmen, including William Rayner, George Potee and W.C. Pennington, saw the opportunity and created the South Baltimore and Curtis Bay Railway to capture it.
Their new business was a five-mile-long electrified streetcar line that debuted May 28, 1892 connecting railways from the South Baltimore side of the Patapsco River. It created a new station in Brooklyn that terminated in Curtis Bay. Iron tracks were laid on the Long Bridge, and special care was taken to ensure the drawbridge remained functional. Electric power lines were strung the length of the railway, which would soon become known as the “Blue Line.” Patrons were charged a one-way fare of five cents to use it.
The railway, which was purchased a year later by the Traction Company (a company that would, itself, eventually be absorbed into United Railways and Electric Company), helped foster a huge cross flow of commuters into and out of Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. An early casualty of the railway’s arrival were the planned streets north of Chesapeake Avenue, which were cut off from the original plats and never constructed. But the businesses in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay benefitted, especially the fabled Flood’s Park, owned by the cantankerous John T. “Jack” Flood, who was fortunate enough to have the streetcar line terminate at the front gates of his infamous park.
Despite its success some considered the Long Bridge a nuisance, especially the shipping industry whose boats often sat in long lines awaiting the bridge’s lone span to open or close for the large vessels. The 1890s saw a huge increase in industry on both sides of the Patapsco River and this was especially so near Spring Gardens on the Baltimore side of the river, and shipping interests began ratcheting up the pressure to ease the congestion.
“It is not necessary to explain to any man familiar with the harbor conditions in Baltimore the necessity of opening up of Spring Gardens to our shipping,” Congressman Frank C. Wachter told the U.S. House of Representatives Nov. 25, 1898. Wachter, who was president of the Southwest Baltimore Business Men’s Association prior to being elected, was eager for a fast win in Congress and quickly drafted an appropriations request to study the removal of the Long Bridge.
“Day after day for years we have been hearing complaints of shipping men about the congested condition of our harbor,” Wachter said. “As far as my investigations have gone I have been convinced that the only thing in the way of opening Spring Gardens is the existence of the Long Bridge. If Spring Gardens cannot be opened up without the removal of the Long Bridge, then the Long Bridge must go — that’s all there is about it.
“What benefit is this bridge to Baltimore, as compared with the advantages that would accrue to our commerce from the opening of Spring Gardens? The bridge may benefit a few Anne Arundel County farmers, who occasionally bring some loads of trucks across it, and it is possibly much used by gentlemen who play an occasional game of pool across the river, but beyond that I cannot see what the use it is to the city, Wachter continued. “The railway companies may kick, but then I am not in Congress to represent the railway companies.”
A one-term delegate, Wachter’s push to close the Long Bridge failed miserably, and his conclusion that the bridge only served a few farmers was clearly wrong. Cromwell and Crisp had turned the bridge into a financial success and farmers flocked to it despite the high tolls. Even more used if after it was acquired by the state and tolls eliminated. The shipping interests would have to wait for the bridge’s demise. It would be nearly two decades before that day would come.
Mounting Troubles
With business and park patronage in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay steadily increasing the Long Bridge experienced considerable wear on its pilings and wooden timbers. Routine maintenance was performanced by Baltimore City, but like many municipal streets and bridges of the era excessive use caused it to break down. By 1913 the then-57-year-old bridge was reaching the end of its useful life. The first sign of trouble was in April 1913 when a Baltimore-bound streetcar derailed and careened off the bridge into the Patapsco River. One commuter was killed and 25 others were injured. Investigators initially blamed the trolley’s excessive speed, but Baltimore’s Mayor James H. Preston complained that the bridge “bounces up and down” when the streetcars cross it. He blamed the Baltimore Sun for successfully leading opposition against a $2 million loan the city requested for a new bridge the previous year.
Trouble struck again when the trestle on the Long Bridge burned in 1915 putting the bridge out of commission until repairs could be made. People and businesses on both shores of the Patapsco agreed it was time for a new bridge, and plans were set into motion to build what would become the Hanover Street Bridge, which would change the landscape of the area again in 1917.
The bridge across the Patapsco accelerated the growth of businesses in Brooklyn and Curtis Bay as The Patapsco Company had envisioned. The beach resorts, beer gardens and pleasure palaces of the late 1890s were among the first to see growth. Baltimoreans looking to duck the city’s more stringent alcohol laws found a place to carouse without fear. Places like Acton’s Park, the Walnut Springs Hotel, which stood near southeast corner of East Patapsco Avenue and South Hanover Street, Bush’s Park, Meeter’s Park, Starr & Klein’s, O’Brien’s Park and the notorious Flood’s Park all saw business increase after the Long Bridge was built. Alcohol was the great equalizer and the new bridge-borne access to these parks created an environment where the horse-drawn carriages of Baltimore’s high society mingled with people on foot en route.
Many stories were written about the Long Bridge in the Baltimore Sun, mostly from columnists who enjoyed waxing nostalgic about the bridge, their relationship with it, and its place in Baltimore lore. The bridge improved commerce in Baltimore, and gave Anne Arundel County farmers and residents as far south as Annapolis and Deale access to Baltimore in a way that they had never enjoyed before.
The Long Bridge was finally replaced by the Hanover Street Bridge in a joint project between Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County. The new bridge was opened Jan. 21, 1917, and the private streetcar “Maryland” was the first car to roll across its tracks. Parts of the Long Bridge’s skeletal structure remained in the Patapsco near the shoreline for decades after its closure. For years people still fished off the planks atop those pilings, but they were eventually swallowed by the river. As time marched on those pilings became a distant memory for some, and a curiosity for others who never knew that they served as the legs of a bridge that forever changed the lives of their families in the early 1800s.
Coming next …
Part 3: Brooklyn Rising: The Lost City of Pennington
Editor’s Note: This history of Brooklyn was compiled from research conducted at the University of Maryland-College Park, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, dozens of articles in the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Washington Post, Annapolis Capital and Maryland Gazette through the mid-1800s, the Keuthe Library in Glen Burnie, Anne Arundel County’s Planning and Zoning Department, and several local histories written by area historians, including the Bible of the area’s history, “A History of Brooklyn-Curtis Bay, 1776–1976,” which was written by Brooklyn’s Centennial Committee in 1976. Thanks also go out to Horton and Maryann McCormick, Frank Bittner, Rick Arnold, the USCG’s Dottie Mitchell, Geraldine Bates, the Chesapeake Arts Center’s Belinda Fraley-Huesman and Nicole Caracia, and a host of others.
