Author Kevin Baker to Lead Brooklyn Bridge Walking Tour

Kevin Baker

There are few structures in America with a history and an aura matching that of the legendary Brooklyn Bridge. On Wednesday, May 27, booksellers at Hotel ABA will have a unique opportunity to join author and New York City expert Kevin Baker on a walking tour over the Brooklyn Bridge. (The event is free, but reservations are required.)

BTW caught up with Baker via e-mail to talk about The Bridge, The City, and ... baseball, naturally.

BTW: What can booksellers look forward to on the walking tour over the Brooklyn Bridge?

Kevin Baker: We will cross the entire span of the bridge, past its two, enormous towers -- at the time, the largest structures ever built in North America. We'll see the magnificent vista of New York Harbor, and the view up the East River; the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty, Governor's Island, and everything that moves along the great waterways of New York.

We'll talk about how the bridge was built, the tragic story of the Roeblings, its builders, and the terrible task of fighting the bends to put the bridge towers in place. We'll talk about the bridge's revolutionary design, and how a dishonest, Tammany-connected contractor almost wrecked it with his faulty cables; about the fatal riot that broke out on the bridge's opening day, and the great American who was one of the first people to cross it. And we'll talk about the role of the bridge in American (and New York) culture, how it was celebrated by great writers and artists, from Whitman to Hart Crane, Joseph Stella to David Hockney ... and why one man (Henry James) despised it.

BTW: Why do you think the Brooklyn Bridge holds such a special place in the history of New York City and, in fact, the history of our country?

The bridge was one of the first, and one of the greatest, of many enormous projects designed to tie New York City together, and in this it worked tremendously well. As a city of such colossal size, New York is always threatening to fly apart -- to become "ungovernable." The bridge went a long way to making its critical, 1898 consolidation possible. It greatly facilitated the growth of Brooklyn into what it has been since the 1920s, which is our most populous borough. And by enabling consolidation, it enabled New York to become what it is today, instead of what so many other American cities have become, which is an inner, urban core, imperious or desperate, ringed by smaller, resentful entities, which either envy or fear it. The bridge ensured that New York would remain big -- big enough to at least partly control its own destiny.

Beyond that, it was something that was new, that was spectacular, that was unprecedented. New Yorkers love being the best, and the first. As for the rest of the country, well, the bridge heralded an era in which American ingenuity, American commerce was coming into its own -- an age in which we would become the biggest economy, the most modern country in the world. It was a statement that we weren't just this provincial backwater, but a nation comparable to any in Europe.

Beyond all that, it's simply beautiful.

BTW: Aside from your gig as a Brooklyn Bridge tour guide, what else can booksellers look forward to from Kevin Baker?

Presently, I am working on a history of New York City baseball for Pantheon, tentatively entitled The New York Game, a story of the city and the sport. I'm hoping to finish it before the end of the year. Although baseball has many antecedents, what we think of as the modern game was developed here, and it has even been intricately connected to the city ever since.

I also have a graphic novel, Luna Park, coming out from the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics in November. And when the baseball book is done, I will eagerly turn my attention to a historical novel, and another (nonfiction) history I have a contract for with Houghton Mifflin.

Editor's Note: Space on the tour, which begins at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27, is limited, so booksellers should sign up now by sending an e-mail to Sarah Rettger.

Kevin Baker is the author of Dreamland, Paradise Alley, and Strivers Row, all from Harper Perennial.