The Brooklyn Bridge Gets a Facial

By Winnie HuApril 16, 2023

After amassing more than a century's worth of grime and pollution, the Brooklyn Bridge is getting a deep cleaning. I put on a hardhat and passed through a security checkpoint to see the work being done.

Here's what I learned →

As part of a $300 million restoration effort, the cleaning started on the bridge's Brooklyn side three years ago. Currently, scaffolding partially fills the soaring arches on the Manhattan side, where workers spread a cleaner over the brownish granite and let it soak in for five minutes before scrubbing it off.

When they rinse it off, a light gray color with unexpected hues of pink and blue is revealed, "the real color of the stone," said Bill Ferdinandsen, who is overseeing the cleaning. This gives New Yorkers an idea of what the bridge must have looked like when it first opened in 1883.

The cleaning goes beyond aesthetics. Though granite is hard, it has pores. And when those pores become clogged, little pieces can flake off, said Paul Schwartz, the city's deputy transportation commissioner of bridges.

"Think of it like exfoliating your skin," he told me. "You want to keep it clean."

To strengthen the bridge, workers removed red bricks from the arches and put fresh concrete in behind them.

Now, they are laying more than 200,000 new bricks by hand, replicating the original patterns.

The meticulous process preserves the historical details of the bridge down to the mortar, which is made with cement from the same upstate New York quarries that supplied it for the bridge's original construction.

The project is expected to finish later this year.

Read more about New York City infrastructure: