"An Element of Mystery": The Golden Gate Bridge at 75

"Still, for the time being — and that time being could last for centuries — the Golden Gate Bridge remains a world icon. What does the Bridge mean, finally, after each of its engineering and architectural achievements is explored? At the case of all great art, there remains an element of mystery. Like a Bach fugue, or Beethoven's Ninth, or a symphony by Mahler, the Golden Gate Bridge can be analyzed in terms of its parts and functions. In its final effect and meaning, however, the Bridge is more than the sum total of any of these. The Golden Gate Bridge embodies a beauty at once useful and transcendent. It emanates a music of mathematics and design and offers enduring proof that human beings can alter the planet with reverence, can mend or complete their environment for social purposes. The Bridge is a triumphant structure, a testimony to the creativity of mankind. At the same time, it also asserts the limits and brevity of human achievement in a cosmos that is as endless and ancient as time itself."

— Kevin Starr
Golden Gate; The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge

Opening festivities, 50th, and 75th anniversaries

The bridge-opening celebration began on May 27, 1937 and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed by foot and roller skate. On opening day, Mayor Angelo Rossi and other officials rode the ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge in a motorcade past three ceremonial "barriers", the last a blockade of beauty queens who required Joseph Strauss (chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project) to present the bridge to the Highway District before allowing him to pass. An official song, "There's a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate", was chosen to commemorate the event. Strauss wrote a poem that is now on the Golden Gate Bridge entitled "The Mighty Task is Done." The next day, President Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, DC signaling the official start of vehicle traffic over the Bridge at noon. When the celebration got out of hand, the SFPD had a small riot in the uptown Polk Gulch area. Weeks of civil and cultural activities called "the Fiesta" followed. A statue of Strauss was moved in 1955 to a site near the bridge.

In May 1987, as part of the 50th anniversary celebration, the Golden Gate Bridge district again closed the bridge to automobile traffic and allowed pedestrians to cross the bridge. However, this celebration attracted 750,000 to 1,000,000 people, and ineffective crowd control meant the bridge became congested with roughly 300,000 people, causing the center span of the bridge to flatten out under the weight. Although the bridge is designed to flex in that way under heavy loads, and was estimated not to have exceeded 40% of the yielding stress of the suspension cables, bridge officials have stated that uncontrolled pedestrian access is not being considered as part of the 75th anniversary to be held Sunday, May 27, 2012, because of the additional law enforcement costs required "since 9/11". From a Wikipedia entry.

"One Monday morning I just started work. It was wet, cold and slippery, you know, from the fog. I stepped onto one of the stringer beams. You've got to put your food down straight. Well, evidently I didn't. I stepped out too far and I slipped. I didn't have any fear really, I figured the net would catch me and I would bounce up and land on my feet like I'd seen in the circus. Well, the net went down to rocks. I came up. The first drop didn't seem to hurt too much. Then I came back down. That's when I had the pain. I broke my back in three places."

"So they took me to St. Luke's Hospital, and they jacked me up and put a body cast on me right away. I was in the hospital about 12 weeks. Later I figured I'd fallen about 43 feet. And that's how I got into the Halfway to Hell Club. "

— Al Zampa, Ironworker. From Al Zampa and the Bay Area Bridges by John V. Robinson.

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"An Element of Mystery": The Golden Gate Bridge at 75

Opening festivities, 50th, and 75th anniversaries

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