and a member of the New York State Assembly. Eastman had met Andrew Carnegie, principal owner of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh and previously a manager at the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). J. Edgar Thomson, President of the PRR, was persuaded to provide financial support, and Keystone became the contractor for the initial attempt to build a bridge at Poughkeepsie. Keystone prepared a four pier bridge design, but the Panic of 1873 killed financial support for project. In 1875 Eastman and his colleagues made a second attempt at a bridge project, developing an agreement with the American Bridge Company of Chicago (founded 1870). American Bridge developed a plan and confronted the challenge of building the support piers in deep water. Pier construction began in 1876, but the contractors encountered the failure of a pier foundation and related construction difficulties in 1877. By early 1878 the company was bankrupt, and Eastman died later that year. It took several more years to find new investors for the project. In 1886, the Manhattan Bridge Building Company was organized to finance the construction. Among the prominent backers was Henry Clay Frick, the coal tycoon and associate of Carnegie. The Union Bridge Company of Athens, Pennsylvania, which had completed the Michigan Central cantilever bridge at Niagara (see Niagara Cantilever Bridge), was subcontracted to build the Poughkeepsie Bridge. Dawson, Symmes and Usher were the foundation engineers, while John F. O'Rourke, P. P. Dickinson and Arthur B. Paine were the structural engineers. The bridge was designed by Charles Macdonald and Arthur B. Paine. As is typical for cantilever bridges, construction was carried out by constructing cribwork, masonry piers, towers, fixed truss sections on falsework, and finally cantilever sections, with the final cantilever interconnection (suspended) spans floated out or raised with falsework. The first train crossed the bridge on December 29, 1888, and it was formally opened for scheduled passenger service on January 1, 1889. Considered an engineering marvel of the day, the bridge has seven main spans. The total length is , including approaches, and the top of the deck is above water. It is a multispan cantilever truss bridge, having two river-crossing cantilever spans of each, one center span of , two anchor (connecting) spans of , two shore spans of each, a approach viaduct on the eastern bank and a approach viaduct on the western bank. All seven spans were built of newly available Bessemer