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The Golden Gate Bridge is a magnificent Art Deco structure spanning a submerged cleft in the Coastal Mountain Range, the Golden Gate. Through this rocky gate the waters of the Coastal Range Mountains have carved a channel to the sea. The name Golden Gate was given to this strait by Captain John C. Fremont in 1848. The odds against building the bridge were great - the waters at the ocen entrance to San Francisco were too menacing, the Gate was too wide to be spanned by a suspension bridge, the costs were too high, with estimates starting at $56 million and going as high as $100 million. The first plans for the construction of a bridge that would span the Golden Gate started back in 1916. Between 1916 and 1932 different designs were submitted and scrapped. In 1929 Joseph Strauss was appointed as Chief Engineer. The final design and construction, Clifford Paine, was submitted in the spring of 1930 and became the official rendering of the Golden Gate Bridge. Strauss estimated the construction would run at about $27,165,000. The Golden Gate Bridge is the result of the joint effort of Joseph Strauss, Clifford Paine, engineer Charles A. Ellis, and consulting architect Irving F. Morrow. The bridge was planned locally, and financed by San Francisco and the five coastal counties to the North. Construction on the bridge began in January of 1933. It took only 52 months to build the Golden Gate Bridge, which opened on May 27, 1937, at a cost of $27,125,000. Fort Point and the Golden Gate Bridge The original plans for the contruction of the Golden Gate Bridge called for the complete elimination of Fort Point. The massive concrete blocks of the south cable anchorage was designed to rest on a level spit of land where Fort Point now sits. The fort was clearly in the way. Chief Engineer Joseph Strauss insisted on preserving the fort however. It is the only Civil War-era brick fort on the West Coast of the United States. Strauss ordered a detour. Much of the cliff behind the fort was cut away, and the cable anchorage was relocated there. The fort itself was spanned by a conventional steel arch. He had contractors widen and pave the area around the fort. That meant dismantling hundreds of tons of granite rocks from the seawall, storing them until after the road was completed, and rebuilding the wall exactly as it had been before, its alignment partially altered. Engineers and other key personnel set up offices inside the fort. Arched casemates on the second floor of the fort became a cafeteria, soldiers once drilled, while cables for the bridge soared above empty cannon emplacements. Last updated on December 5, 2002 |
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This
exhibit depicts the development and contruction of the Golden Gate
Bridge. Photo panels show a few of the stages of construction,
as well as a few artifacts celebrating the the opening of the bridge
upon completion. There is also an enlarged copy of one of the
blueprint of the bridge within the exhibit room.