His first design, in 1921, was for a combination cantilever and suspension bridge with towers nearly 800 feet high. It was amazingly ugly, but it was an idea, and Strauss was convinced it could be built.
In "The Gate," van der Zee points out that Strauss was not an engineer. "He was the drawbridge king," van der Zee said recently, "but not an engineer of any kind."
He was, however, a visionary, a promoter, an organizer and a master salesman. Historian Kevin Starr, in his 2010 book "Golden Gate," compares Strauss to P.T. Barnum and the Wizard of Oz.
Strauss made his first talk promoting a Golden Gate bridge at a Sausalito City Council meeting in 1922. Mayor James Madden recalled the event years later. At first it was a tough sell. Strauss, Mayor Madden would say, was "the world's worst speaker."
But Strauss got better and better, and his idea caught on. The 1920s were the flowering of the age of the automobile, and by the end of the decade thousands of
cars overwhelmed the Marin ferry systems.
There was plenty of opposition to the bridge: particularly from the Southern Pacific Co., which had a transportation monopoly in the North Bay; from old-line conservatives; even from the Sierra Club, which worried that a bridge would destroy the beauty of the Golden Gate.
But the idea had power behind it. Bridge advocates circulated new drawings. The new design looked very much like the bridge we see now. It was stunning, and the idea of such a bridge fired the imagination. In 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression, people in the new six-county Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District voted by a 3-to-1 margin for a $35 million bond issue, a major sum at the time.
An engineering dream team
Strauss assembled a matchless team to design and build the bridge: consulting engineers Charles Ellis, a professor at the University of Illinois; Leon Moisseiff, a designer and theoretician; and Othmar Ammann, a Swiss-born structural engineer who had built the George Washington Bridge in New York. There was also Charles Derleth, dean of the
college of engineering at UC Berkeley; Andrew Lawson, a geologist and seismic expert; and two architects: John Elberson and Irving Morrow.
Strauss held the title of chief engineer, but others were responsible for the design. Ellis, in particular, did all the mathematical calculations that made the bridge possible. "The look, the heart of the bridge is his design," van der Zee said. "It all comes from him."
But Strauss would fire Ellis before his work on the bridge was complete. So Strauss got the lion's share of the credit and a statue at the San Francisco end. Ellis' name does not appear on the bridge. Clifford Paine took over as his No. 2 man.
Construction began in January 1933 and the bridge opened in May 1937, four years and four months later. There were 1,200,000 rivets, 80,000 miles of spliced wire, 254 steel suspender ropes connecting the cables with the deck, and a single, slightly arching span - 4,200 feet between the towers.
It was dangerous and exacting work - 11 men were killed building the Golden Gate Bridge, 10 in a single accident in February 1937.
The men who built it knew it best: "The bridge was outstanding and far above anything else," said Charles Kring, superintendent of cable spinning. "Everybody who worked on that bridge thought it was special," said Evan "Slim" Lambert. "I thought it was an honor to be able to work on something like that," said John Urban, an ironworker, " 'cause it's gonna be there a long time."
The bridge opened May 27, 1937, and 200,000 walked across. "The old town went nuts ..." Willis O'Brien wrote in The Chronicle. "It stood on its head. It walked on its hands. It threw its hat in the air."
Strauss offered a poem: "At last, the mighty task is done," it began.
Not long afterward, the Golden Gate Bridge became a symbol - and not always a symbol of success. The first known suicide came in August 1937, not three months after the bridge opened. At least 1,500 others have followed.
It also became the symbol of San Francisco, the way the old Ferry Building had been before it. Then a symbol of the West. And then of the country itself, almost like the Statue of Liberty.
During World War II, more than 1.5 million men and women sailed beneath the Golden Gate on warships and troopships. More soldiers, sailors and Marines followed in the Korean War, the Cold War and Vietnam. For many service members , the Golden Gate Bridge was the last sight of home. Some never saw it again.
Dick Fontaine was a soldier, returning on a troopship after a long voyage from Korea. It was just at twilight and as the ship passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, the soldiers began to cheer, from the bow of the ship to the stern. They threw their caps in the water, and Fontaine remembers seeing hundreds of hats, floating in the ship's wake.
Why did they do that? It was simple, he said.
"When that ship went under the bridge, the long, lousy trip was over, and Korea was over, the Army was over, all that stuff was over. We were home."
This article appeared on page E - 21 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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