greathitecture: USA WEEK//3//GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

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.

Photo: Jay Graham

//BRIDGE

Although the idea of a bridge spanning the Golden Gate was not new, the proposal that eventually took hold 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. He asked bridge engineers whether it could be built for less and one who responded was Joseph Strauss, ambitious engineer and poet.

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Construction began on January 5, 1933. The project cost more than $35 million, completing ahead of schedule and under budget. The project was finished and opened May 27, 1937.

Strauss was chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project. The final graceful suspension design was conceived by New York’s Manhattan Bridge designer Leon Moisseiff. Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco elements. The US Navy had wanted it to be painted with black and yellow stripes to ensure visibility by passing ships. Ellis was tasked with designing a "bridge within a bridge" in the southern abutment, to avoid the need to demolish Fort Point, a pre-Civil War masonry fortification viewed, even then, as worthy of historic preservation. He penned a graceful steel arch spanning the fort and carrying the roadway to the bridge's southern anchorage.

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The Golden Gate Bridge has two main cables which pass over the tops of the two 746-ft-tall towers and are secured at either end in giant anchorages. The galvanized carbon steel wire comprising each main cable was laid by spinning the wire, using a loom-type shuttle that moved back and forth as it laid the wire in place to form the cables. The spinning of the main cable wires was completed in 6 months and 9 days. Main Cable bands are located every 50 feet along the main cables and the vertical suspender ropes are hung from the cable bands. The Golden Gate Bridge has 250 pairs of vertical suspender ropes that are spaced 50 feet apart across both sides of the Bridge.