Friends of Saxonburg Museum set up GoFundMe to save Brooklyn Bridge replica
The Brooklyn Bridge is in need of financial help from the public to save it from structural collapse — not the real bridge, but the scale replica located next to the Saxonburg Museum.
The Friends of Saxonburg Museum, which recently took over operations of the museum, have set up a GoFundMe to raise money to restore the Brooklyn Bridge replica, built to represent Saxonburg’s role in bringing the iconic New York City landmark to life.
While the real bridge — devised by Saxonburg borough founder John Roebling and spearheaded by his son, Washington — is still going strong after 150 years, the replica is suffering from water damage.
The bridge replica was initially built by a group of three men from the Saxony Shriners group in 1985 to serve as a float for the city of Butler’s bicentennial parade. One of those men was Ralph Henderson, the grandfather of current Saxonburg Museum vice president Brooke Wamsley.
The three men spent 13 weeks — five days a week, three and a half hours a day — putting together the replica out of aluminum, plywood and fiberglass. Initially, the bridge’s two towers were built from painted Styrofoam before being replaced with stone towers.
The mini-bridge later found a permanent home in Roebling Park in 2001, where it was attached to Roebling’s original wire rope workshop.
The workshop itself is also in need of repairs, to the tune of $250,000, to repair a foundation which has been slowly sinking into the ground since 2017.
As it turned out, moving the bridge replica next to the workshop put the workshop’s standing as a National Historic Landmark at risk, as the National Register of Historic Places does not allow anything to be attached to any structure marked on the historic landmark register. The museum’s management did not discover this until 2017.
“That was not known when my grandfather put it in the park,” Wamsley said.
As part of the repairs, the bridge replica would be moved to an open space on the lawn in front of the Saxonburg Museum.
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, the GoFundMe for repairing the bridge replica is sitting at $820 raised out of its goal of $80,000, with eight backers having donated so far.
