Who ran the Brooklyn Bridge site while its chief engineer was bedridden?

His wife, Emily Warren Roebling. Her husband Washington stayed chief engineer, but after he developed caisson disease and became bedridden, she took over much of his duties, including day-to-day supervision and project management, and she is remembered as an engineer for her more than ten years of contributions to finishing the bridge. His illness, now called decompression sickness, came from going to underwater depths to study the placement of the caissons and not rising at the proper speed.

As the only person who visited Washington during his illness, Emily relayed his instructions to his assistants and reported the work's progress back to him. Through his teachings, she built up extensive knowledge of strength of materials, stress analysis, cable construction, and calculating the catenary curves that shape a suspension bridge's cables. She also dealt directly with politicians, competing engineers, and everyone else connected to the project—so thoroughly that many people came to believe she was behind the bridge's entire design.

In 1882, with Washington's title of chief engineer in jeopardy because of his long illness, Emily lobbied engineers and politicians in person to defend her husband's work and keep him in the position. The bridge was completed in 1883, and ahead of its official opening, Emily Roebling was the first to cross it by carriage, carrying a rooster as a sign of victory. At the opening ceremony, a speaker called the bridge an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and to her capacity for the higher education she had too long been barred from.

Roebling's determination didn't end with the bridge. She went on to earn a law certificate from New York University and wrote an influential 1899 essay, "A Wife's Disabilities," arguing for greater women's rights—though she signed it with her husband's initials, W.A.R., rather than her own name.