When you've got a question that perhaps isn't life-changing but still weighs on your mind, our feature OKI Wanna Know might be able to help. This week, we return to a local landmark.
When Nate Weyand-Geise of Northern Kentucky crosses the Roebling Suspension Bridge, he wonders about something on the southeast corner in Covington.
"I'd like to know what that little brown brick building is next to the Roebling sidewalk; what is the purpose of that building," Weyand-Geise says. "Could you find some history on it?"
WVXU reached out to the Roebling Bridge Society. They're the volunteers who take care of the flags atop the bridge towers. They're also responsible for both the guided and self-guided tours, the Roebling photography contest, and the 'necklace lights' which shine on the supporting cables at night.
Ralph Wolf is a former president of the society. He says when the bridge opened in 1867 it wasn't public infrastructure. It was a business, competing with ferries crossing the Ohio River.
"It was the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge Company and they're the ones who built the bridge. They hired John Roebling to design and to build the bridge, and then they operated it as a toll bridge until 1953 when the state bought the bridge from the bridge company."
The company wasn't completely private. The city of Covington bought $100,000 worth of stock in the company.
Chief Engineer John Roebling had 120 shares, and Amos Shinkle had another 130. Shinkle went on to be company president for 26 years.
A current board member with the Roebling Bridge Society says business was good. Heather Churchman found an Enquirer article that says the company had a profit of $134,000 in 1888. That'd be about $4.6 million today. Total construction on the bridge cost $1.8 million, which works out to be a little more than $40 million now.
"Three cents to go across on foot, each way. It was 50 cents to the buy 25 tickets, and you could by 50 tickets for 90 cents, a hundred tickets for a $1.50," Churchman says. "By purchasing tickets in packages, they would be charged 10% less than the present rate charged by the ferry companies."
Of course, those were prices for people and vehicles.
"Tolls for cattle were 10 cents, hogs and sheep were 2 cents," Wolf says. "A horse and rider was 10 cents, and it was also 10 cents for a horse and buggy, and for each additional horse pulling a wagon it was another 5 cents."
You might think the little building we're talking about was used as a toll booth on the Kentucky side, but Wolf says no.
"The toll booths were at the end of the anchorage; the anchor houses on each end of the bridge."
Next to our mystery shed, there's a building that's home to a law firm and realtors today. Wolf says, in 1888, this was the bridge company's offices, where the tickets were sold and the money kept.
"The bridge company safe was broken into at one point," Churchman says. "I have just found one article so far, and they said 'no clews' (sic) as to who robbed the safe."
That was in 1904. Churchman says it appears the robber or robbers got away with $143, and local newspapers never reported on any arrests.
What stands there today is actually the second bridge office building. The first one had four floors, two above the bridge deck and two below.
The mystery shed next to the bridge company office building has three floors and was used as a garage and for storage.
"It does have a vehicle entrance, and they did park trucks in there, and of course there's a vehicle entrance, too, on the street level," Wolf says. "The bridge company actually had a motorcycle patrol, so if there were incidents on the bridge or they needed to get to the tollhouses on the other end for some reason, they could use motorcycles.
When the Commonwealth of Kentucky bought the bridge, the office and the shed came with it. Wolf says the office became the district headquarters for a few years.
Wolf knows all this because he retired from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC).
"Later when the state bought the bridge, the highway department used it just like the bridge company did, for equipment, materials, it has workbenches," he notes.
A spokesman for the KYTC confirms it's still used for storage.
Jake Ryle says there's some old scaffolding, cables, and extra light bulbs for the bridge, but the lower two levels are empty.
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