Today, the Golden Gate Bridge has come to symbolize San Francisco, and it is the universally recognizable icon of that great port city. Although conceived as a way to move people from place to place, it has become a destination in its own right. Spanning the Golden Gate Strait, a place of stunning natural beauty, the bridge is itself an architectural masterwork. Its tall, tapered towers and graceful cables evoke a sense of awe as they appear out of a fog-shrouded channel. The distinctive terra cotta color contrasts beautifully with the rugged cliffs on both shores of the strait. The original design first proposed for the famous bridge, however, was nothing like what we see today.
Making the Impossible a Reality
Strauss’s undergraduate thesis had proposed bridging an even more inhospitable strait—the Bering Strait—between Russia and Alaska. After graduating from the University of Cincinnati, he soon developed a specialty designing bascule bridges, those with a movable structure, such as drawbridges. His first project was a rail bridge over the Cuyahoga River near Lake Erie in 1902. In 1915, he built a bascule bridge over the Neva River in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), Russia. In 1917, San Francisco city engineer Michael O’Shaughnessy invited Strauss to do a feasibility study for the Golden Gate crossing.
In 1921, Strauss presented his initial concept: a hybrid cantilevered truss and suspension design. When it was revealed to the public, it was criticized for being awkward and ugly. Indeed, it fell short of being anything iconic or beautiful. But Strauss surrounded himself with good people. He hired Charles Alton Ellis to become his lead engineer on the project, along with consulting engineer Leon Moisseiff. Irving Morrow was brought in as architectural consultant.
While the press was declaring the hybrid bridge ugly, Moisseiff raised concerns about its suitability, suggesting a suspension bridge instead. Charles Ellis created the design, with its two great towers, that would later actually be built. Morrow designed the distinctive tapering towers with their art deco crosspieces. He is the one responsible for putting beauty in the beast of the gargantuan project.
In 1930, the final plans were submitted to the San Francisco District Board. They were largely the work of Charles Ellis, who performed meticulous calculations to ensure the integrity of what would be, when built, the longest suspension bridge in the world. Ellis, who had become vice president of Strauss’s company, nonetheless irritated Strauss with his slow and careful process: the reason for their subsequent falling-out and Strauss firing Ellis in 1930.
Clifford E. Paine succeeded Ellis, completing the design and supervising construction. Ellis, recognizing the scope of the project, completed calculations for the bridge, even after he was fired and returned to an academic career teaching engineering. He presented his work to Paine’s team, providing verification for the integrity of the design.
Creative Funding During the Great Depression
With plans finalized, there was one major hurdle. The 1929 Depression made the government reluctant to finance such a large project, estimated in the millions of dollars. The promoters of the bridge were undaunted, however, and took the issue to the voters. They asked if citizens would be willing to personally underwrite the loan using their homes, businesses, or farms as collateral—and surprisingly, the citizens agreed.
Bank of America founder Amandeo Giannini, realizing that people needed work in the Great Depression, extended a credit line of $5 million for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Tolls would be used to maintain the bridge and pay off the debt, which was retired in 1971.
Setting a New Standard for Safety
At the time, there was a morbid rule of thumb about large projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge. It stated that you would lose one worker’s life for every million dollars spent to construct it. The initial estimates put the price of the bridge at $35 million, meaning 35 fatalities would be expected during its construction.
Joseph Strauss, however, did not see fatalities as inevitable. He invested considerable time and resources in creating a culture of construction safety. The hard hat, now considered a standard feature on jobsites, was first mandated for the Golden Gate project. Edward W. Bullard created the design based on soldiers’ helmets and the soft helmets then worn by miners. In a time when steel work involved throwing and catching hot rivets, the hats offered valuable protection to the workers.
Strauss was also concerned with protecting the workers from falling from the structure, so he created a safety net suspended below. It was akin to the nets underneath circus aerialists. The net provided an added assurance of safety to the crews. Workers who lost their footing and were saved by the net called themselves the “Halfway to Hell Club.”
Safety rules were strictly enforced, and daredevils were fired on the spot. Drunkenness was also cause for dismissal, but Strauss did have a special concoction prepared for workers who arrived with hangovers. He also provided special cream to protect workers’ exposed skin from the raw elements. Pay was from $4 to $11 per day—good money during the Great Depression.
In the end, 11 people died building the bridge—10 of whom died when the machine platform they were working on fell through the net. Continually emphasizing jobsite safety, Strauss had experienced only a third of the fatalities expected.
The final golden rivet was driven on April 28, 1937, and the bridge opened to traffic a month later. The bridge was impressive. The main span of 4,200 feet remained the longest suspension span in the world until 1964, when the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City was built. The Golden Gate’s two towers rose 746 feet above the water. When asked how long the bridge would last, Strauss replied, “Forever.”
The bridge has survived earthquakes, and a recent retrofitting has made it even safer from seismic activity. Painting crews work continuously all year round to maintain the coating of the 9,150-foot-long steel structure, its towers, and cables. And with proper ongoing care, the Golden Gate Bridge will serve San Francisco and the surrounding communities long into the future.
“Our world of today revolves around things which at one time couldn’t be done because they were supposedly beyond the limits of human endeavor ... don’t be afraid to dream,” Joseph Baermann Strauss said.
