Golden Gate Bridge
Interesting facts
- In 2020 new railing slats began making the bridge hum in strong winds; one analysis found the tones match the notes F, G, A and B.
- Each of the two main cables contains 27,572 individual wires, and the steel wire in both cables together would stretch an estimated 80,000 miles.
- For the 50th anniversary in 1987, around 300,000 people crowded onto the deck at once and the arch of the main span visibly flattened under their weight.
- The day before cars were allowed on in 1937, some 200,000 people crossed the new bridge on foot or on roller skates.
- Charles Ellis designed a steel arch to carry the roadway over Fort Point, so the Civil War-era fort beneath the south end did not have to be demolished.
- Joseph Strauss's graduate thesis had proposed a 55-mile railroad bridge across the Bering Strait, long before he took charge of the Golden Gate.
- When Depression investors would not buy the construction bonds, Amadeo Giannini of Bank of America agreed in 1932 to purchase the entire issue.
- Between 1982 and 1986 the original concrete deck was replaced with lighter steel panels in 747 sections, working over 401 nights without fully closing the road.
- Its 746-foot towers were the tallest of any suspension bridge until 1993, and each tower holds roughly 600,000 rivets.
- Strauss set a brick from his demolished college building at the University of Cincinnati into the south anchorage before the concrete was poured.
Why it is worth it
The bridge's color exists because nobody could agree on one. The steel arrived from the fabricators already coated in a burnt-orange sealant primer meant only to protect it from rust during shipping and assembly. The US Navy, worried about ships colliding with it in fog, wanted it painted black with yellow stripes; the Army Air Corps wanted red-and-white candy-cane bands for aircraft visibility. Consulting architect Irving Morrow looked at the primer against the fog and the water and argued to keep it, insisting the warm color read better in mist than gray or black ever would. The bridge authority agreed, gave the shade the official name International Orange, and it has been repainted in the same color ever since — not, as often assumed, continuously, but through a rolling touch-up program.
Chief engineer Joseph Strauss ran an unusually safety-conscious site for 1933: hard hats were made mandatory for the first time on any American construction project, and Strauss spent $130,000 — a large sum for the Depression era — on a safety net slung the full length of the structure beneath the work deck. It caught nineteen falling men over the course of construction, who banded together afterward calling themselves the Halfway to Hell Club. The net's luck ran out on 17 February 1937, ten weeks before opening, when a scaffold broke loose, tore through the net under the extra load, and took ten workers into the bay with it; only one survived. Including that accident, eleven men died building the bridge.
The engineering behind the bridge has its own quieter injustice. Much of the mathematics that made the design possible — the calculations proving a suspension span this long could handle wind and its own weight — was done by engineer Charles Ellis, who spent over two years on the project before chief engineer Joseph Strauss fired him in 1931 and scrubbed his name from the official project report, apparently unwilling to share credit. Ellis went uncredited for decades; it wasn't until 2012, more than seventy years after the bridge opened, that a plaque acknowledging his work was finally installed on its south tower.
Getting there
7 km from Chinatown. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is about 24 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Palace of Fine Arts 3.3 km · folly
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km) strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in California, United States. The structure links San Francisco—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula—to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. It also carries pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and is designated as part of U.S. Bicycle Route 95. Recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Wonders of the Modern World, the bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco and California.
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