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

1. Barter, James. The Golden Gate Bridge. San Diego
   Lucent Books, 2001.
2. The Golden Gate Bridge. Narr. Jack Perkins.
   Videocassette. AE 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/SFNbrhds/Golden_Gate_Bridge
   .html
6. www.goldengatebridge.org