The Golden Gate Bridge

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The Golden Gate Bridge
Presented by The Third Row Six Presenters Bre
tt Portner-Kuhlow Scott Tumm
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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

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• 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

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• Official Pedestrian Day
• May 27, 1937
• Bridge opens for traffic
• May 28, 1937

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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

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Project Management Before the Manhattan Project

• James Reed
• General Manager

Joseph Strauss Chief Engineer
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Joseph Strauss Chief Engineer
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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.

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Scope

• Build a bridge spanning the Golden Gate
• -Must be tall enough for ships to pass
  underneath

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Time

• There was no real set timetable managers ensured
  the project progressed as quickly as possible.

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Cost

• 73,000,000

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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

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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

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Black Wednesday February 17, 1937

• A scaffold slipped off the bridge and through the
  protective netting below, taking ten men to their
  deaths.

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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

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The Net

• 120,000 Safety net suspended 60 feet below the
  road surface nineteen men saved

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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

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Unexpected Delays and Challenges

• Temporary trestle knocked over twice
• The ten day San Francisco Strike
• Fort Point

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Fort Point

• Located directly under south end of bridge
• Historians and the community in general protested
  to preserve the fort

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Records held by the Bridge (in 1937)

• Longest bridge
• Tallest free standing structure in the world
  (over 740 feet)

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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

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References

• Barter, James. The Golden Gate Bridge. San Diego
  Lucent Books, 2001.
• The Golden Gate Bridge. Narr. Jack Perkins.
  Videocassette. AE Home Video, 1994.
• Strauss, Joseph. The Golden Gate Bridge. San
  Francisco Golden Gate Bridge and Highway
  District, 1938.
• 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.
• www.inetours.com/Pages/SFNbrhds/Golden_Gate_Bridge
  .html
• www.goldengatebridge.org