Bridging the Golden Gate: a photo essay.

Fireman, Janet ; Kale, Shelly

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THE MOUTH OF THE BAY

Long before the Golden Gate Bridge became part of the iconography of California and the West, the narrow strait that it spans between San Francisco and the Marin headlands was a place of legend, seafaring, migration, and industry. To Spanish explorers it was elusive and formidable. But always it held the promise of new life in a new land.

For more than two hundred years following Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's journey up the Pacific Coast from Mexico in 1542-43, word of a huge estuary in Alta California beckoned Spanish mariners seeking a port of call. But the narrow opening to San Francisco Bay eluded them: hidden by fog; protected by dangerous, wave-swept rocks, swirling tides, and treacherous currents; and masked by the appearance of the islands in the bay and the hills beyond as a solid landmass.

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Members of Gaspar de Portola's land expedition first sighted the bay from atop hills south of present-day San Francisco in October 1769 as part of the first Spanish colonization expedition to Alta California. Pedro Fages observed the quantiosa vacana de estero (large mouth of the estuary) in 1770. Two years later, in March 1772, he and Father Juan Crespi viewed the estero from the Berkeley hills, describing it as la bocana, the mouth, of the bay. (1)

It was not until 1775 that Juan Manuel de Ayala, aboard the San Carlos, made the first entrada to the bay. From the sea, avoiding the treacherous Farallones ("rocks jutting out of the sea"), and overcoming perilous oceanic forces, he sailed through the imposing cleft between the San Francisco and Matin peninsulas and anchored at Fort Point. This feat opened the bay to further Spanish shipping and settlement, as well as to the development of its port and village, Yerba Buena, and eventually the world.

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In June 1846, John Charles Fremont, the explorer and a lieutenant colonel in the Mexican-American War, sailed across the bay to San Francisco from what today is Sausalito. In an account of his western excursions, he described the opening to "the great bay" as "a single gap, resembling a mountain pass" Reminded of the entrance from Turkey's narrow Bosphorus Strait into Chrysoceras--or Golden Horn, a deep, natural harbor in modern-day Istanbul--he named the opening to the bay Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate. (2)

The name was prescient. Soon U.S. frigates were joined by other vessels sailing through the Golden Gate with eager passengers from all over the world following the discovery of gold in 1848. Ferries, sailing ships, and steamships crowded the burgeoning port in the bay as mining, fishing, and shipping industries took hold. Once sought after as a portal inward leading to a safe harbor, now the narrow opening beckoned outward, a gateway for the new state's commerce and prosperity.

Even with all this activity--including the familiar recurrence of shipwrecks--the Golden Gate, approximately three miles long, one mile wide, and more than three hundred feet deep, continued to inspire. Nineteenth-century artists, lithographers, photographers, and poets captured its spirit, celebrated its symbolism, and initiated a fascination that would be anchored in the next century by designers of a landmark structure: the Golden Gate Bridge.

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Representations of the Golden Gate proliferated in the artistic, literary, and commercial spheres as painters, poets, and lithographers revealed a new landscape populated by ships, a growing port city, abundant waters, and golden sunsets.

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CLOSING THE GAP

Visions of integrating San Francisco with surrounding communities and the entire region were conceived and developed in time and in tune with the expanding age of the automobile. Despite the Great Depression, the city was still dynamic and had grown rapidly. In 1930, at 634,782, the population was twice its size in 1900, and the same growth spurt dominated the entire Bay Area, which had more than doubled since the turn of the century to 1,578,009. (3)

As automobiles grew in popularity, auto ferries proliferated. Weekenders fled the city for the East Bay and Marin County hills, while residents from those surrounding counties poured into San Francisco to enjoy urban delights and charm. (4) By the end of the twenties and into the early thirties, with ferries choked by traffic, travelers' frustrations mounted over their hours-long lineups to board for bay crossings. Motorist pressure, combined with developers' interest in Marin's rural areas and impetus to provide jobs for the growing unemployed, pushed the bridge project forward. On November 4, 1930, voters approved a $35 million bond measure to fund the administration, engineering, and building of the Golden Gate Bridge, though litigation concerning financial arrangements delayed the start of construction. (5)

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The magnificent Golden Gate Bridge was erected against the Great Depression's dark and foreboding backdrop. Who would have thought that such an ingenious and much-needed transportation connection, engineering marvel, and spectacular regional symbol could or would be brought forth at such a bleak historical moment?

With various motivations, some people claimed that the bridge shouldn't--maybe couldn't--be built. Times were grim. Difficulties were everywhere: Dramatic and crippling labor strife climaxed in the 1934 Waterfront and General Strike, closing the Port of San Francisco for more than two months and shutting down the city for several fearful days in July; 20 percent of the state's population was on the relief rolls; political disarray and wrangling were rife; and widespread nativism and xenophobia plagued the region. Dust Bowl migrants, refugees from even worse situations, joined other Californians suffering through hard times in paradise.

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Nevertheless, the bridge was going to be built, and for many good reasons. The bridge was a vital component in the environmental reconfiguration of California by grand public works including the Bay Bridge, the Central valley Project, Shasta Dam, and Stockton's deep-water port--all integral to an elaborate infrastructural base of modernity that the state has relied on for almost a century. (6)

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"A PRACTICAL PROPOSITION"

Abridge across the Golden Gate, heretofore considered a wild flight of the imagination has ... become a practical proposition." So wrote Joseph B. Strauss, the bridge's Chicago-based chief engineer, and San Francisco's city engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy in their 1922 pamphlet Bridging "The Golden Gate." (7) Presenting the feasibility of erecting an unprecedented 4,000-plus-foot span across the Golden Gate, the booklet featured Strauss's original design for a hybrid cantilever-suspension bridge, as well as projected costs and earnings.

Fifteen years later, on May 27, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to exuberant fanfare with a weeklong celebration. A good deal had changed since Strauss's initial plans, such as a new dynamic Art Deco design and numerous technological and architectural innovations. The bridge's orange vermillion color and dramatic illumination seemed to intensify its size and scale, enhancing its majesty. "Spectacular in its setting, graceful and artistic in design, magnificent in its mighty sweep across the Golden Gate, the Bridge is the outstanding suspension bridge of the world," boasted the Bethlehem Steel Company, the project's largest single contractor, in a 1937 promotional pamphlet. (8)

Celebrated as a triumph of engineering, the new bridge--then the world's longest single-span suspension bridge--produced an immediate and widespread impact on the city and region. During its first year, more than 400,000 pedestrians and nearly four million motor vehicles carrying more than eight million passengers crossed its span. A year after the bridge opened, ferries that had transported goods and people across the bay since the early 1850s--and cars after the turn of the century--had reduced services or suspended operations. The growth of the city, once a cause for the bridge's construction, now was its effect. As the permanent link with communities around the bay--enlarged further by recent completion of the Oakland Bay Bridge--the Golden Gate Bridge fostered a regional identity and economy, symbolized today by soaring orange towers of inspiration.

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DESIGNING THE BRIDGE

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Joseph Strauss's original 1921 design was published a year later in a pamphlet intended to garner support for the bridge project that "will represent a crowning achievement of American endeavor." Mechanical and laborious, with steel-girded sections on either end and a suspension span in the middle, the design was abandoned after 1925 in favor of a pure suspension bridge of sleek and modern expression.

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Studies leading to the bridge's new design were orchestrated by a team of specialists whom Joseph Strauss (standing) hired as consultants: (seated, left to right) Charles A. Ellis, design engineer for the Chicago-based Strauss Engineering Corporation; Leon S. Moisseiff, leading bridge theoretician; Othman Hermann Ammann, designer of New York City's George Washington Bridge; and Charles Derleth, Jr., dean of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

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In 1929, the renowned Chicago-based theatre architect John Eberson (1875-1964) introduced Art Deco to the bridge's design, contributing to its final elegant form. The vertical drawing of Eberson's plan for the towers very much resembles the built structure. However, his concepts for an ornate Beaux Arts-style colonnaded approach to the bridge depicting a monumental plaza with a triumphal gateway were replaced by designs reflecting an updated Art Deco sensibility.

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In 1930, Strauss replaced Eberson with the local architectural firm Morrow & Morrow, whose principals, Irving Foster Morrow (1884-1952) and his wife, Gertrude Comfort Morrow (1888-1983), created new drawings. Irving Morrow finalized the bridge's iconic features and stylized architectural elements, including the type font for signage.

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CONSTRUCTING THE BRIDGE

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In 1931, the Bethlehem Steel Company purchased a steel complex from the McClintick-Marshall Corporation of Pittsburgh. Located in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a center of iron and steel production, Pittstown Industrial Complex was a major fabricator for the Golden Gate Bridge. In a 1937 brochure (opposite, below), Bethlehem Steel proudly summarized its role as contractor for the fabrication and erection of the bridge's towers and steel superstructure.

That story is also told in an album of photographs documenting the bridge's fabrication from 1933 to 1936 at Pottstown. These examples from the album illustrate a section of steelwork loaded for shipment to California in April 1933 (below); the trial assembly at the railway of the base sections for the Marin tower's east leg in July 1933 (left); and the plant assembly of two sections of stiffening trusses-designed to eliminate the twisting effects of high winds-in March 1936 (opposite, above).

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Oil companies naturally were interested in the bridge project. Anticipating the expected demand for gasoline to drive along northern county roads, they employed photographers and writers to tout the bridge in publications and advertising. Ted Huggins (1892-1989), a public relations representative for Standard Oil Company of California, photographed the bridge's construction from 1954 to 1937. A sample of his images (pages 30-33) draw our attention to the bridge, bridge workers, and even everyday activities.

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Associated Oil Company commissioned nearly 100 photographs by Charles M. Hiller between 1953 and 1936. Many capture rarely seen moments during construction. Others depict aspects of the bridge's often dangerous assembly process, which--along with fog, high winds, and the dizzying height-generated the idea to install a suspended safety net.

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Upon completion of the bridge, engineering facts and data were widely available to the curious public. This 1935 booklet offering "a technical description in ordinary language" described the project through text, diagrams, and drawings by architectural renderer Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986), who also drew the cover illustration (above left). The world's longest suspension bridge in its day, the Golden Gate Bridge also boasted the world's highest and largest bridge towers, tallest cable masts, and greatest navigational clearance.

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ART OF THE BRIDGE

Landscape painter Ray Strong (1905-2006) was living in San Francisco in the 1930s when he participated in the Roosevelt administration's Public Works of Art Project, the first federal government program to employ artists. Encouraged to depict "the American scene"--the landscape and ordinary people working--Strong chose to portray the bridge under early construction. Me made this study of the towers in progress (above) in 1934. The completed painting, which President Franklin Roosevelt selected to hang in the White House, is now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The photograph (left) shows Strong at work on what is likely the study shown above from his vantage point in San Francisco.

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Even before the bridge was completed, Standard Oil (now Chevron) and other regional booster publishers began to use its image in promotional and informational materials. Well-known artists were commissioned for illustrations, including Maurice Logan (1886-1977), one of San Francisco's best-known commercial illustrators and poster designers. He created this bold and striking image of the bridge under construction for the February 193S cover of the Standard Oil Bulletin.

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Chesley Bonestell's artwork appeared on the cover of this promotional brochure, extolling the bridge as a statewide phenomenon. "Not only will the Golden Gate Bridge benefit San Francisco and the North Bay Redwood Empire counties but it will serve the entire Pacific Coast," the pamphlet explained.

CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, PAM 4454, CH52012.888.TIF

ESSAY COVER: San Francisco Bay (detail), by Carl Von Perbandt, 1893, oil on canvas, California Historical Collections at the Autry National Center, 68-35-1-2.tif; "Golden Gate Bridge spanning San Francisco's 'Golden Gate' toward the Marin shore," ca. 1950 [82], postcard (detail), Stanley A. Piltz Company, San Francisco, Calif., California Historical Society, Kemble Collections, CHS2011.573.tif

NOTES

Caption sources: James P. Delgado and Stephen A. Hailer, Submerged Cultural Resource Assessment: Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and Point Reyes National Seashore (Santa Fe, NM: Southwest Cultural Resources Center, 1989), 71-72; William Titus Birdsall diary, manuscript, Mar. 8-Sept. 16, 1849, CHS, Vault MS 44; James Linen, The Golden Gate (San Francisco: E. Bosqui and Company, 1869), 7, CHS Kemble Collections; Barbara Lekisch, Embracing Scenes about Lakes Tahoe & Donner: Painters, Illustrators & Sketch Artists, 1855-1915 (Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 2003), 175; Interview with Dorothea Lange, conducted by Richard K. Doud in New York, New York, May 22, 1964; http:// www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/ oral-history-interview-dorothea-lange-11757; Jocelyn Moss, "Opposition to the Golden Gate Bridge," Matin County Historical Society Magazine 14, no. 1 (1987): 2-7; Elliott Family scrapbooks, CHS MS OV 5017, v. 10; "The Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco" (San Francisco: Wobblers, Inc., n.d.).

(1) Herbert E. Bolton, "Expedition to San Francisco Bay in 1770. Diary of Pedro Fages," in Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, vol. 2, no. 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1911), 152; Theodore E. Treutlein, San Francisco Bay: Discovery and Colonization, 1769-I776 (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1968), 36n55.

(2) John Charles Fremont, Geographical Memoir upon Upper California in Illustration of His Map of Oregon and California (Washington, D.C.: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, Printers, 1848), 32. In a footnote to his account of the bay entrance's sighting, Fremont explained that the strait was "called Chrysopylae (golden gate) ... on the same principle that the harbor of Byzantium (Constantinople afterwards) was called Chrysoceras (golden horn)." The Geographical Memoir, which he addressed to the U.S. Senate, is the first published account of the name of the strait as the Golden Gate.

(3) "Selected Census data from the San Francisco Bay Area," Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments, http://www.bayareacensus. ca.gov/historical/copop18602000.htm.

(4) There were 461,800 vehicles in the Bay Area in 1930, or 1.04 vehicles for each household and .29 per capita. "The Big Picture: Vehicle Ownership between 1930 and 2010," Metropolitan Transportation Commission, http://www.mtc.ca.gov/maps_and_data/datamart/forecast/ao/tablele.htm.

(5) Bridge tolls earned enough by 1971 to retire the bonds and provide almost $39 million in interest earnings. Golden Gate Bridge Highway & Transportation District, http://goldengatebridge.org/research/BondMeasure.php.

(6) Kevin Start, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 309.

(7) M. M. O'Shaughnessy and Joseph Strauss, Priding "The Golden Gate" (San Francisco, n.p., ca. 1922), 1.

(8) The Golden Gate Bridge (Bethlehem, PA: Bethlehem Steel Company, 1937), 12.

This essay grew out of the exhibition A Wild Flight of the Imagination: The Story of the Golden Gate Bridge--commemorating the bridge's 75th anniversary--at the California Historical Society in San Francisco, February 26, 2012 to October 14, 2012, under the creative leadership of CHS Executive Director Anthea Hartig, and curated by Jessica Hough, with Anne Lansdowne Rees, Robert David, Erin Garcia, and Trubec Schock. A multimedia book based on the exhibition and developed with Wild Blue Studios will be available on iTunes; check www.californiahistoricalsociety.org for details.

Janet Fireman is Editor of California History. Shelly Kale is Managing Editor of California History.