The Golden Gate Bridge
Presented by:
The Third Row Six
Presenters:
Brett Portner-Kuhlow
Scott Tumm
Important Dates
• 1920: A feasibility Study
recommends construction
of the Golden Gate Bridge
• 1923: The State
Legislature Passes the
Golden Gate Bridge and
Highway District Act of
California into Law
• 1930: Joseph Strauss,
Chief Engineer submits
his final plans for the
bridge
• January 5, 1933:
Construction of the bridge
begins
• February 1933:
Anchorages are
completed
• June 1935: The
towers are completed
• March 1936: The
suspension cables are
completed
• April 1937: The deck
surface is completed
•Official Pedestrian Day:
May 27, 1937
•Bridge opens for traffic:
May 28, 1937
Spanning the Golden Gate
• The entrance to San Francisco Bay was named
the ‘Golden Gate’ by early settlers
• One mile wide gap
• 60 Mph wind tunnel like gusts of wind for much
of the year
• 2.5 Million cubic feet of water per second pass
through the Golden Gate
• Currents
• Earthquakes
Project Management Before the
Manhattan Project
James Reed Joseph Strauss
General Manager Chief Engineer
Joseph Strauss: Chief Engineer
Strauss the Man
• Rude
• Short-tempered
• Arrogant
• Labeled ‘brilliant bully’ by his peers
-Strauss thought big. His graduate thesis
proposed a 50 mile long bridge across the
Bering Strait that would connect Siberia
and Alaska.
Scope
Build a bridge spanning the Golden Gate
-Must be tall enough for ships to pass underneath
Time
There was no real set timetable; managers
ensured the project progressed as quickly as
possible.
Cost
$73,000,000
Financial Facts
• $35 million in bonds
• $38 million in interest
• Bridge completely paid off on June 30, 1971
• Bridge completely paid for by tolls
• No state or federal money went into the bridge
• Bank of America extended a $5 million line of credit to
the bridge project
• People put up their homes, farms and businesses as
collateral for the bridge to generate the $35 million in
bond issue
• Presently, bridge still operates only with money collected
from tolls
To Build a Bridge
• Strauss spent three years researching his first
design
• He assembled a team of engineers to create the
final design
• Strauss expected that three dozen workers
would die during the construction, about one for
every one million dollars spent on the
construction
• 11 deaths occurred
Black Wednesday: February 17,
1937
A scaffold slipped off the bridge and through
the protective netting below, taking ten
men to their deaths.
Safety Under Strauss
• 1st Mandatory use of hard hats
• Issuing of safety belts and tie off lines
• Dizzy riveters: respirators for burning paint fumes
• Riveters and ironworkers required to wear leather gloves
• Sun goggles, sun-block lotion
• Field hospital at south end staffed full time; treated
12,000 injuries by December, 1935.
• No deaths for the first 3 years and 8 months of project
The Net
$120,000 Safety net
suspended 60 feet
below the road
surface: nineteen
men saved
The ‘Halfway to Hell’ Club
• Nineteen official members, some jumped
for fun
• Named by tabloids looking for a story
• First official member hit the ground as
well, broke four vertebrae
Unexpected Delays and Challenges
• Temporary trestle knocked over twice
• The ten day San Francisco Strike
• Fort Point
Fort Point
• Located directly under
south end of bridge
• Historians and the
community in general
protested to preserve the
fort
Records held by the Bridge
(in 1937)
• Longest bridge
• Tallest free standing structure in the world
(over 740 feet)
Golden Gate Fun Facts
• Riveting crew held unofficial speed contests; they sometimes threw
red-hot rivets distances of 70 feet or more
• 80,000 miles of pencil diameter steel cable in bridge
• Steel for the bridge was made in Pennsylvania and ‘shipped’ to
California via the Panama Canal
• $75,000 paid in tolls each day
• A gold rivet was hammered into place to celebrate the completion of
the bridge
• ‘International Orange’
• Blind woman and guide dog the first pedestrians ever to cross the
bridge
• 1.25 billion cars have crossed bridge since ’37
• Bridge ‘Firsts’
First person to cross on stilts
First person to cross sticking tongue out all the way
First wooden hat to cross the bridge
• Each anchorage weighs as much as 17,000 elephants
References
1. Barter, James. The Golden Gate
Bridge. San Diego: Lucent
Books, 2001.
2. The Golden Gate Bridge. Narr.
Jack Perkins. Videocassette.
A&E Home Video, 1994.
3. Strauss, Joseph. The Golden
Gate Bridge. San Francisco:
Golden Gate Bridge and
Highway District, 1938.
4. Van Der Zee, John. The Gate:
The True Story of the Design
and Construction of the Golden
Gate Bridge. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1986.
5. www.inetours.com/Pages/SFNb
rhds/Golden_Gate_Bridge.html
6. www.goldengatebridge.org