Golden Gate Bridge Research Paper

It is 1933. Construction begins. 1937, this landmark is completed and opened to pedestrians and vehicles. It is built at a cost of approximately $35.5 million and comes in under budget and ahead of schedule. World War I veteran Harold Wobber, this landmarks first suicide, claimed, "This is where I get off,” and then jumps to his death. Now jump to 2013. Nearly 1,600 people have committed suicide by jumping off. The average number of suicides from this landmark is three per month. The Golden Gate Bridge was an example of a feat of engineering.

The city made notifications not initially planned out and ultimately adding more dead load of the bridge which led to the collapse under too much load the bridge was intended to take. They also added railings to the bridge that did not meet current safety standards in 1998. By replacing them, it added more load to the bridge. During their last renovation of the bridge before the collapse, more concrete was going to be added. They chose to use mixing truck to pour concrete, but Minnesota specifications said that pouring of concrete was to be done on site and mixing trucks could not be used on state bridges. The company's actions to place trucks all over the site to pour their concrete while specifications said that concrete was to be mixed on site without trucks, shows how the actions taken by the company was not morally right in considering state regulations. Bridge construction inspectors determined that the concrete specifications meet required standards and consequently they determined that it was okay to place the materials on the bridge for the

were very poor, but somehow, many architectural feats were being made. The U.S. Government was still building the greatest dam in the world before the Depression, the Hoover Dam, which lasted five years to build. It takes a lot of manpower and materials for the Government to build this great dam, so they hired contractors to build it and the The U.S. provides the materials. Men of six companies were hired to build the dam in 7 years or penalties will ensue; the men were called, Six Companies, Inc. Remarkably, the contractors banded together to build the dam because of the immense size of the structure, one contractor cannot do the task alone (America's Experiences). The Dams magnificent feat in becoming USA’s greatest dam inspired the same contracting firm to work on a certain bridge in the west (Hiktzik). During the time Hoover Dam was being constructed, out in the west, another architectural feat was occurring. In 1933 San Francisco, California, construction starts on what will soon to be one of America’s greatest landmarks, The Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridges architects, Joseph B. Strauss, a man who built many bridges across the U.S., was involved in the bridge project. Strauss and his colleagues had to deal with many problems about the bridge such as people saying it had to be impossible or it was expensive and a hazard to the environment (History.com). Once the bridge was funded with thirty-five million dollars,

The first completed steel bridge was the Eads Bridge, in St. Louis Missouri. Steel was a very new material and was just starting to become commercially available. Steel was a smart choice to use because it is extremely hard and resists rusting. The Eads Bridge was the longest arch bridge in the world, of 510 feet long. St. Louis became a very important city in the midwest and had to really compete with Chicago during the Civil War. After the Civil War, St. Louis started growing in all directions. “.... the city of St. Louis wanted to reestablish its prewar dominance as the economic powerhouse of the midwest” (Ostrow 75). The main reason to build the Eads Bridge was to connect settlers from the East to the lands of the West. At the time there

In the small town of Waco, Texas who would have thought it was once well known for the structure of a bridge, the Waco Suspension Bridge to be exact. Up until 1870, the Brazos River was just a simple river that had no special meaning to it. The land around it was empty, occasionally you would find cattlemen pushing their cattle across stream, but that was only because you could not find one bridge that spanned the eight hundred miles of river flowing through Central Texas. This caused a serious transportation issue for merchants and travelers. It became clear that a better means of crossing the river was necessary.

One of the few people that were going to fully push for this project would be William Tweed, a New York politician that was said to have a hand in every creek and crevice of business in the area of New York both legal and otherwise. Tweed began his career in 1851 by going from a simple fireman into an alderman and from then on he found that he no longer had to depend on honest work from then on and by 1869 or the time when the bridge would start to be build and the same year that its very own author of the great bridge would sacrifice his life for the sake of both his own pride and according to some accounts, the bridge’s success. By 1869, he was reaching the pinnacle of his influence as he was in his prime and doing everything that he set his mind to and this was when he would become the “Boss” of New York and from then on become known as Boss Tweed and he might as well been since judges made decisions based on his request, legislators passed or opposed laws at his will, and both the Mayor and Governor were in his pockets and were at his beck call. This was the Tweed Machine and it controlled every aspect of politics and was the epicenter

Tacoma Narrows Bridge was opened to the public on July 1st 1940 after being in construction for 2 years. The structure was built 5,939-foot-long with a span of 2800 feet in order to bridge the gap between Tacoma and Gig Harbour in the state of Washington, USA. It became known as “Galloping Gertie” due to the fact that the bridge

Initially, suspension bridges before 1940 were made of piers, towers, wires, anchorages, and roadways. Piers were the main foundation for the suspension bridges. There usually were two of them, which were made out of cement and were entrenched in ground underneath the body of water that the bridge was spanned across. Towers were built on top of the piers to provide a means of connection for the roadways and wires. Wires were connected to the towers, roadways, and anchorages to provide tension support for the weight of the bridge. The anchorages were large cement platforms that were planted into the ground on either side of the land so that the wires could be connected to it. Lastly, the roadways were the main point of the suspension bridge. They usually were wide enough to provide four lanes of traffic and stretched from one side of the bridge to the other. This was the basic design of the suspension bridges

The first memory I have of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge (the 59th Street Bridge) is from when I was ten-years old. It was early October, barely 8:30 in the morning, and my mom was driving through traffic at 70 mph with the skill of a middle-aged taxi driver. Going about 20 mph over the speed limit, she had been screaming into her phone telling the person at the other end, Fred, that we would be late. That morning I had been extremely late for a test at the Trinity School which would determine my acceptance into a private school. Speeding across the bridge was hectic and slightly terrifying (I had a childhood fear of large bodies of water and the East River was no exception).But somehow, through the window of the car, I had the time to think to myself; You can see everything from up here.

In 1919, a study was begun to see if it would be possible to build a bridge across the Golden Gate. Michael O’Shaughnessy was the San Francisco city engineer. He was in charge of the rebuilding of the city after the devastating 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of the city. O’Shaughnessy knew the need for the city to have bridges. Most said it could not be done and others said it could be done but “it would cost about $100 million to build it” (Barter 23). O’Shaughnessy and Strauss, both wanting the same thing, got together. After the two consulted, they figured the only way to bridge the channel was to use a suspension bridge.

The current Bay Bridge spans across the San Francisco Bay and through Yerba Buena Island. The reason the bridge travels through an island is because in the 1930’s it would have been nearly impossible to construct an eight mile long bridge spanning such deep water. During most of the 20th century, this island was a U.S. Navy base and in order for construction to be allowed, the approval of Congress was necessary. As a result, there was a great deal of lobbying that occurred in order to allow California the right to build across the island. After gaining the approval of Congress in February of 1931, construction started in July of 1933.

The new contractors were very experienced at working with concrete, but lacked the knowledge and experience with working with steel. Because of this, John Holland only took on the work on the basis of a labour management contract, which puts them in charge of the labour, but all the engineering decisions were still up to World Service & Constructions. This lead to confusion and lack of communication between the parties working on the construction of the bridge.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is perhaps the most notorious failure in the world of engineering. It collapsed on November 7, 1940 just months after its opening on July 1, 1940. It was designed by Leon Moisseiff and at its time it was the third largest suspension bridge in the world with a center span of over half a mile long. The bridge was very narrow and sleek giving it a look of grace, but this design made it very flexible in the wind. Nicknamed the "Galloping Gertie," because of its undulating behavior, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge drew the attention of motorists seeking a cheap thrill. Drivers felt that they were driving on a roller coaster, as they would disappear from sight in the trough of

The bridge has a very well designed ‘sustainability’ concept, relying on upcycled materials to complete the bridge. These upcycled materials consist of the wood, the fishing net, the oil barrels and the plastic shielding for the barrels. These materials can be used for functional roles in the design, such as platforms, floatation, safety lines across hand rails, and so on. The bridge’s sustainability concept can be further supported by the ease of replacing materials, and not throwing them in the bin. The materials such as wood, plastic and pieces of metallic bolts and nuts can be recycled and reused for other purposed such as furniture, storage or completely recycled back into a molten form for the metallic objects.

(Vasani, 2011) Many components when assembled together form a bridge structure. Basic components of a bridge are superstructure or Decking, Bearings, Substructure which again consists of Piers and Abutments, Wing walls and Returns, and Foundation.