The Hidden Engineering that Makes New York Tick

New York City is the perfect place to understand the importance of modern engineering, but the most valuable lessons won’t be found at the Empire State Building or in Central Park. To truly discover what makes modern life tick, you have to look at the unloved, uncelebrated elements of New York: its sewers, bridges, and elevators. 

On this episode, host Lisa Margonelli talks to Guru Madhavan, the Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and senior director of programs at the National Academy of Engineering. Madhavan wrote about the history of this often-overlooked infrastructure in a trilogy of Issues essays about New York City’s history. He talks about how the invention of the elevator brake enabled the construction of skyscrapers and how the detailed “grind work” of maintenance keeps grand projects like the Bayonne Bridge functioning. He also highlights the public health and sanitation-centered vision of Egbert Viele—the nearly forgotten engineer who made New York City livable. 

Resources: 

Read Guru Madhavan’s New York Trilogy:

• “The Greatest Show on Earth” about the invention of the elevator brake.

• “The Grind Challenges” about the Bayonne Bridge and maintenance grind work. 

• “Living in Viele’s World” about the contrast between Egbert Viele’s and Frederick Law Olmsted’s competing visions of New York City.

Learn more about the invisible work that undergirds modern life by checking out Madhavan’s latest book, Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World. 

Read the 2019 article Madhavan cites about how engineering benefits society. 

Lisa mentioned riding on a tugboat pushing a barge full of petroleum, but she misremembered!  The repairs were then occurring on the Goethals Bridge, not the Bayonne. Here’s the whole story of “A Dangerous Move” from the New York Times.