![]() Unable to find other work, Ellis continued to crunch the numbers on the Golden Gate Bridge, unpaid, for up to 70 hours a week. Just three days before he was slated to return, Strauss sent a letter informing Ellis that he was to take an indefinite (and unpaid) vacation and turn all of his work over to his assistant. According to Purdue University, Ellis’s work “included performing thousands of calculations for the bridge, writing specifications for ten bridge construction contracts, and supervising the test boring and siting, which involved the complicated process of locating firm footing on the Marin shore.” He did his job tirelessly for three years, including spending several months figuring out the complex calculations with Moisseff.īy November 1931, Strauss-who, according to PBS, “did not understand the complexity of the engineering work” and couldn’t understand why it was taking so long-ordered Ellis to take a vacation. By the end of 1929, the team had switched from Strauss’s initial design to a suspension bridge designed by Moisseff. Moisseff, designer of New York City’s Manhattan Bridge, on as consultants. In 1925, he and Strauss brought Harvard University’s George F. Ellis’s job would be to oversee bridge design and supervise construction. Ellis, author of Essentials in the Theory of Framed Structures, in 1922. STRAUSS FIRED ONE KEY MEMBER OF THE DESIGN TEAM BEFORE CONSTRUCTION STARTED. Department of War (which had long feared that any bridge across San Francisco Bay would hinder navigation), a guarantee that local workers would have first crack at the jobs, and a mass boycott of the ferry service operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad.” 5. Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club were also opposed to the bridge, which they felt would mar the natural beauty of the strait.Īccording to the Federal Highway Administration, getting the bridge approved “took several favorable court rulings, an enabling act from the State legislature, two Federal hearings prior to approval from the U.S. One of those lawsuits was brought by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which owned 51 percent of the ferry company that took commuters and cars between San Francisco and Marin County. “The Golden Gate Bridge in 19 lawsuits against it,” transit expert Rod Diridon told NBC Bay Area. A temporary construction permit was granted on December 24, 1924, and a final permit was issued on August 11, 1930. IT HAD TO BE APPROVED BY THE WAR DEPARTMENT.īecause the War Department owned the land on both sides of the strait, it had to authorize the construction of the bridge. Įventually, Strauss would abandon his design in favor of a more conventional suspension bridge (more on that later). It seemed to strain its way across the Golden Gate”. ![]() The local press called the design ugly, and one writer described it as “a ponderous, blunt bridge that combined a heavy tinker toy frame at each end with a short suspension span. When they did reveal it, the public wasn’t pleased. The bridge commission hid the design from the public for a year (though Strauss was drumming up support for the bridge using his design during that time). Reports vary, but Strauss thought he could build the bridge for $17 million or $27 million. Strauss submitted plans for a symmetrical cantilever-suspension hybrid span, which he had developed and later patented. In 1920, O’Shaughnessy sent letters to three prominent engineers inquiring about building a bridge over the strait: Joseph B. ![]() The initial results estimated that constructing a bridge would cost $100 million. The project wouldn’t be seriously considered until 1919, when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had the city’s engineer, Michael O’Shaughnessy, do a study to determine the feasibility of a bridge. Army Captain John Fremont in 1846.) Many didn’t believe it could be done: At its narrowest point, the strait was still more than a mile wide, with turbulent currents ranging from 4.5 to 7.5 knots. (The strait was named Chrysopylae, Greek for “golden gate,” by U.S. Three years after completing the transcontinental railroad, Charles Crocker, a railroad executive, made a presentation to the Marin County Board of Supervisors in which he laid out plans for a bridge that would span the Golden Gate Strait, the entrance to the ocean from San Francisco Bay. Here are a few things you might not have known about the oft-photographed structure. On May 27, 1937, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened to the public.
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