7 Modern Wonders
of the World
The Golden Gate Bridge
is a suspension bridge spanning the
Golden Gate, the opening of the San
Francisco Bay onto the Pacific Ocean.
As part of both U.S. Route 101 and
California State Route 1, it connects
the city of San Francisco on the northern
tip of the San Francisco Peninsula
to Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge
was the longest suspension bridge
span in the world when it was completed
during the year 1937, and has become
an internationally recognized symbol
of San Francisco and California. Since
its completion, the span length has
been surpassed by eight other bridges.
It still has the second longest suspension
bridge main span in the United States,
after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
in New York City. In 2007, it was
ranked fifth on the List of America's
Favorite Architecture by the American
Institute of Architects.
History
Ferry service
Golden Gate, circa 1891.Before the
bridge was built, the only practical
short route between San Francisco
and what is now Marin County was by
boat across a section of San Francisco
Bay. Ferry service began as early
as 1820, with regularly scheduled
service beginning in the 1840s for
purposes of transporting water to
San Francisco. The Sausalito Land
and Ferry Company service, launched
in 1867, eventually became the Golden
Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific
Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry
operation in the world by the late
1920s. Once for railroad passengers
and customers only, Southern Pacific's
automobile ferries became very profitable
and important to the regional economy.
The ferry crossing between the Hyde
Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito
in Marin County took approximately
20 minutes and cost US$1.00 per vehicle,
a price later reduced to compete with
the new bridge. The trip from the
San Francisco Ferry Building took
27 minutes.
Many wanted to build
a bridge to connect San Francisco
to Marin County. San Francisco was
the largest American city still served
primarily by ferry boats. Because
it did not have a permanent link with
communities around the bay, the city’s
growth rate was below the national
average. Many experts said that a
bridge couldn’t be built across
the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait. It
had strong, swirling tides and currents,
with water 500 ft (150 m) in depth
at the center of the channel, and
frequent strong winds. Experts said
that ferocious winds and blinding
fogs would prevent construction and
operation.
Conception
Although the idea of a bridge spanning
the Golden Gate was not new, the proposal
that eventually took place was made
in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article
by former engineering student James
Wilkins. San Francisco's City Engineer
estimated the cost at $100 million,
impractical for the time, and fielded
the question to bridge engineers of
whether it could be built for less.
One who responded, Joseph Strauss,
was an ambitious but dreamy engineer
and poet who had, for his graduate
thesis, designed a 55-mile (89 km)
long railroad bridge across the Bering
Strait. At the time, Strauss had completed
some 400 drawbridges—most of
which were inland—and nothing
on the scale of the new project. Strauss's
initial drawings were for a massive
cantilever on each side of the strait,
connected by a central suspension
segment, which Strauss promised could
be built for $17 million.
Local authorities agreed
to proceed only on the assurance that
Strauss alter the design and accept
input from several consulting project
experts.[citation needed] A suspension-bridge
design was considered the most practical,
because of recent advances in metallurgy.
Strauss spent more than
a decade drumming up support in Northern
California. The bridge faced opposition,
including litigation, from many sources.
The Department of War was concerned
that the bridge would interfere with
ship traffic; the navy feared that
a ship collision or sabotage to the
bridge could block the entrance to
one of its main harbors. Unions demanded
guarantees that local workers would
be favored for construction jobs.
Southern Pacific Railroad, one of
the most powerful business interests
in California, opposed the bridge
as competition to its ferry fleet
and filed a lawsuit against the project,
leading to a mass boycott of the ferry
service. In May 1924, Colonel Herbert
Deakyne held the second hearing on
the Bridge on behalf of the Secretary
of War in a request to use Federal
land for construction. Deakyne, on
behalf of the Secretary of War, approved
the transfer of land needed for the
bridge structure and leading roads
to the "Bridging the Golden Gate
Association" and both San Francisco
County and Marin County, pending further
bridge plans by Strauss. Another ally
was the fledgling automobile industry,
which supported the development of
roads and bridges to increase demand
for automobiles.
The bridge's name was
first used when the project was initially
discussed in 1917 by M.H. O'Shaughnessy,
city engineer of San Francisco, and
Strauss. The name became official
with the passage of the Golden Gate
Bridge and Highway District Act by
the state legislature in 1923.
Construction
Construction began on January 5, 1933.
The project cost more than $35 million.
Strauss remained head
of the project, overseeing day-to-day
construction and making some groundbreaking
contributions. A graduate of the University
of Cincinnati, he had placed a brick
from his alma mater's demolished McMicken
Hall in the south anchorage before
the concrete was poured. He innovated
the use of movable safety netting
beneath the construction site, which
saved the lives of many otherwise-unprotected
steelworkers. Of eleven men killed
from falls during construction, ten
were killed (when the bridge was near
completion) when the net failed under
the stress of a scaffold that had
fallen. Nineteen others who were saved
by the net over the course of construction
became proud members of the (informal)
Halfway to Hell Club.
The project was finished
by April 1937, $1.3 million under
budget.
Opening festivities
A photograph of the bridge from a
boat underneath.The bridge-opening
celebration began on 27 May 1937 and
lasted for one week. The day before
vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000
people crossed by foot and roller
skate. On opening day, Mayor Angelo
Rossi and other officials rode the
ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge
in a motorcade past three ceremonial
"barriers," the last a blockade
of beauty queens who required Joseph
Strauss to present the bridge to the
Highway District before allowing him
to pass. An official song, "There's
a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate,"
was chosen to commemorate the event.
Strauss wrote a poem that is now on
the Golden Gate Bridge entitled "The
Mighty Task is Done." The next
day, President Roosevelt pushed a
button in Washington, DC signaling
the official start of vehicle traffic
over the Bridge at noon. When the
celebration got out of hand, the SFPD
had a small riot in the uptown Polk
Gulch area. Weeks of civil and cultural
activities called "the Fiesta"
followed. A statue of Strauss was
moved in 1955 to a site near the bridge.
Specifications
The center span was the longest among
suspension bridges until 1964 when
the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was erected
between the boroughs of Staten Island
and Brooklyn in New York City. The
Golden Gate Bridge also had the world's
tallest suspension towers at the time
of construction and retained that
record until more recently. In 1957,
Michigan's Mackinac Bridge surpassed
the Golden Gate Bridge's total length
to become the world's longest two-tower
suspension bridge in total length
between anchorages, but the Mackinac
Bridge has a shorter suspended span
(between towers) compared to the Golden
Gate Bridge.
Structure
The weight of the roadway is hung
off of two cables that pass through
the two main towers and are fixed
in concrete at each end. Each cable
is made of 27,572 strands of wire.
There are 80,000 miles (129,000 km)
of wire in each of the two main cables;
the total is sufficient to go around
the world 5.79 times. The bridge has
approximately 1,200,000 total rivets.
Traffic
Traffic crossing the Bridge during
a foggy morningAs the only road to
exit San Francisco to the north, the
bridge is part of both U.S. Route
101 and California Route 1. The median
markers between the lanes are moved
to conform to traffic patterns. On
weekday mornings, traffic flows mostly
southbound into the city, so four
of the six lanes run southbound. Conversely,
on weekday afternoons, four lanes
run northbound. Although there has
been discussion concerning the installation
of a movable barrier since the 1980s,
the Bridge Board of Directors, in
March 2005, committed to finding funding
to complete the $2 million study required
prior to the installation of a movable
median barrier. The eastern walkway
is for pedestrians and bicycles during
the weekdays and during daylight hours
only, and the western walkway is open
to bicyclists on weekday afternoons,
weekends, and holidays. The speed
limit on the Golden Gate Bridge was
reduced from 55 mph (89 km/h) to 45
mph (72 km/h) on 1 October 1983.
Aesthetics
The bridge is said to
be one of the most beautiful examples
of bridge engineering, both as a structural
design challenge and for its aesthetic
appeal. It was declared one of the
modern Wonders of the World by the
American Society of Civil Engineers.
According to Frommer's travel guide,
the Golden Gate Bridge is "possibly
the most beautiful, certainly the
most photographed, bridge in the world"
(although Frommers also bestows the
"most photographed" honor
on Tower Bridge in London, England).
Aesthetics was the foremost
reason why the first design of Joseph
Strauss was rejected. Upon re-submission
of his bridge construction plan, he
added details, such as lighting, to
outline the bridge's cables and towers.
Paintwork
The bridge was originally painted
with red lead primer and a lead-based
topcoat, which was touched up as required.
In the mid-1960s, a program was started
to improve corrosion protection by
stripping the original paint off and
repainting the bridge with zinc silicate
primer and, originally, vinyl topcoats.
Acrylic topcoats have been used instead
since 1990 for air-quality reasons.
The program was completed in 1995,
and there is now maintenance by 38
painters to touch up the paintwork
where it becomes seriously eroded.
Ultra rare footage of
the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge.
