Has anyone seen the bridge? (Where's that confounded bridge?)

Really, the only thoughts on the story I had today concerned how to maintain the construction of Brooklyn Bridge at the center of the story, or at least, as an essential context and narrative force. There are scenes in the caisson I have yet to really imagine, but that setting was the impetus for the entire project. What happens down there? Who’s down there? What does one think of it? And then of course, there are the effects: income to spend, rivalries with other workmen, the exhaustion physical labor, and the invisible danger of caisson’s disease. Aedan meets Jim there, but who else? He comes down with a bout of the disease—and meets Dr. Smith, his mentor for a life away from the streets. He gains his income from there—how he can support his sister, and how he can piss his life away at saloons and with hookers. 

And in a larger sense Brooklyn Bridge is a symbol of rising American prosperity and ingenuity and grandeur and industrial might. But it’s built on the labor of the working class, many of them immigrants after a dream or just survival. This is a story of survival and desperation after all. 

But first I need to get back to the Bridge. It is the foundation of the story. I need the research and sense of the Bridge to write confidently about it—the construction site, the operation, the workings underground. And what was the impression of it at the time? What would it mean to someone in New York only casually familiar with the project? The Bridge is a portal to developing Aedan the character. Why does he choose a legitimate line of work over crime? Why does he stick through with it? What happens when the shifts get shorter and less frequent? Is he there when Washington Roebling collapses? What happens with the worker's strike? The strike, and Aedan's involvement, has the potential to be a climactic event. And knowing the Bridge is the start.