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
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 had the longest suspension bridge span in the
world when it was completed in 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. A bridge is a structure built to span agorge, valley, road, railroad track, river, body of water,
or any other physical obstacle, for the purpose of providing passage
over the obstacle. Designs of bridges will vary depending on the
function of the bridge and the nature of the terrain where the bridge is
to be constructed.
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 1868, which 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 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
335 ft (102 m) in depth at the center of the channel, and almost
constant winds of 60 mph (97 km/h). Experts said that ferocious winds
and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation.
CONSTRUCTION
Construction began on 5 January 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.
OPENING FESTIVITIES
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.
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