San Francisco Bay bridges
The San Francisco Bay bridges, including the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, are significant engineering achievements that transformed urban transportation and infrastructure in the region. The Bay Bridge, designed by Charles H. Purcell and opened in 1936, features a unique combination of structural types, including a suspension bridge, a cantilever bridge, and a tunnel. It was a product of Depression-era politics and received substantial support from notable figures like Herbert Hoover. The Golden Gate Bridge, completed in 1937 under the guidance of Chief Engineer Joseph B. Strauss, was the longest suspension bridge in the world at its time and is renowned for its Art Deco design, contributing to its status as a global tourist attraction.
Both bridges played crucial roles in the daily commute of suburban populations and reshaped the socio-economic landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area. Their construction not only provided employment but also represented a forward-thinking response to the growing urban needs of the time. Despite challenges such as the significant damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, these bridges remain vital transportation links and enduring symbols of engineering ambition and community development in the Bay Area.
San Francisco Bay bridges
The Events Construction of the two-part San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge
Dates Built 1933-1937
Place San Francisco Bay, California
Constructed during the peak of the Great Depression, both the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were record-breaking engineering achievements. Both bridges were crucial in their historical moment for their political and social significance as successful, grand-scale construction endeavors. They remain significant for both their practical role in facilitating the functionality of the urban environment of the San Francisco Bay Area and their aesthetic and structural qualities.
Designed by Charles H. Purcell, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was constructed starting in 1933 and opened for traffic on November 12, 1936. A product of Depression-era politics, the Bay Bridge came to fruition largely through the support of Herbert Hoover and Clement Calhoun Young, then the governor of California. The Hoover-Young Commission conducted preliminary studies into the viability of the project, and the bridge was ultimately funded by the state.
The bridge consists of a conglomerate of structural types. It combines a suspension bridge on its west bay, a cantilever bridge on its east bay, and a tunnel on its central track through Yerba Buena Island. At the time of its construction, the cantilever bridge was the longest in the world; Yerba Buena Tunnel remains one of the largest tunnels in the world. Designed to accommodate both automobile and railroad traffic, the Bay Bridge offered a unique multidirectional set of urban transportation modes, although trains crossed its span for only a few years. Severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the bridge has undergone renovations and retrofitting and has, nevertheless, remained a crucial urban node.
The construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began in 1933 under the supervision of Chief Engineer Joseph B. Strauss, who had also been instrumental in developing public support for the endeavor. At the time of its completion, the Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world, a record that remained unbroken until the completion of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City in 1967. Architect Irving Morrow worked with Strauss to devise a striking, Art Deco aesthetic for the bridge, which was instrumental in its development as a global tourist icon. Unlike the Bay Bridge, which connected two established urban centers, the Golden Gate Bridge created a transportation corridor around which suburban developments in Marin County were subsequently established.
The completion of these bridge projects involved the employment of numerous skilled workers and general laborers. To a great degree, the prominence and success of these bridges was based on the economic and social realities in which they were constructed. Additionally, however, their design represented a forward-looking attempt to respond to the shifting needs of a growing urban area. As the San Francisco Bay Area grew during the 1940’s and 1950’s, the bridges played significant roles in the daily commute of suburban populations and in the larger infrastructure of the city.
Impact
The completion of both the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 represented significant feats of engineering and administration. Despite the immense expenditures necessitated by their construction, both bridges were completed in the span of only a few years. They offered tangible examples of success and efficiency in a period when such achievements gained widespread social and political significance. Likewise, in both cases, engineering innovations overcame significant structural and practical obstacles. The resulting structures offered new models for bridge design while altering patterns of transportation and infrastructure for the cities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bibliography
Cleary, Richard L. Bridges. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
Dillon, Richard, Thomas Moulin, and Don DeNevi. High Steel: Building the Bridges Across San Francisco Bay. Berkeley, Calif.: Celestial Arts, 1979.
Van Der Zee, John. The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.