One million people walked across the Golden Gate Bridge to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 1987. Many of them probably remembered San Francisco before its most iconic buildings. And in fact, some of you may even remember walking across it once before on its opening day. “Pedestrian Day” in 1937. Barring the possibility of an unusually energetic supercentenarian, that’s unlikely to happen on the Golden Gate Bridge’s 100th anniversary 12 years from now. But we will still be able to appreciate the huge ambitions of its builders, especially the chief design engineer. Joseph Straussalong with Charles Alton Ellis, made possible a project long thought impossible.
Sabin Civil Engineering video at the top of the post Describe the stages of design and construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Building a suspension bridge across the Golden Gate, the deep strait between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, posed a formidable challenge. The unique shape that we know from many photographs resulted in part from the need to anchor the bridge in a way that counterbalanced the enormous forces that would bend the towers inward. It also required a steel-on-steel construction for the suspenders and deck to prevent the formation of catastrophic cracks.
Suspended from the deck are 250 pairs of cables, and each main cable that runs the length of the bridge is actually made up of 27,000 coils of steel wire. The thermal expansion joint system accommodates nearly 4 feet of periodic expansion and contraction.
And we haven’t even gotten started on the underwater blasting and scary-looking excavation required to build the tower in the first place. In any case, the same painstaking efforts of engineers and workers are certainly attested to by the functionality and popularity of the Golden Gate Bridge over the past 88 years. Naturally, it requires quite a bit of maintenance and modification in the meantime, and it would take a true romantic to completely ignore its limitations. (Take for example the lack of rail capacity, which was technically and economically impossible to implement during the Great Depression.) Still, 300,000 people crammed onto deck at once As it celebrated its 50th anniversary, it may have bent along the way, but it didn’t break. It was a testament to the civil engineering acumen of Strauss and his colleagues, but one wishes the centenary celebrations had been better organized.
Related content:
The world’s largest LED light sculpture, “The Bay Lights,” debuts in San Francisco
5 Innovative Bridges That Shaped New York City, New York City
How the Brooklyn Bridge Was Built: The Story of One of History’s Greatest Engineering Feats
A Fascinating Journey Across the Brooklyn Bridge: Watch Footage from 1899
Why there is no bridge from Italy to Sicily – and why the 2,000-year-old dream of building one will soon come true
Built to last: How ancient Roman bridges can withstand the weight of modern cars and trucks
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
