Behind the Shot
The Golden Gate Bridge, spanning the narrow strait of San Francisco Bay, is a historic engineering marvel crossed by more than 110,000 vehicles daily. Prior to its completion in 1937, the only direct way to get from the Marin County side of the San Francisco Bay to the city of San Francisco was via ferry service. On the drawing table as early as 1916, early bridge designs were based on a series of cantilever bridges connected by a central suspended segment. Budget concerns and worries that a bridge collapse would close the bay off from the Pacific Ocean scuttled those plans.
Over time, a new design approach was proposed by Leon Moisseiff, the engineer who designed the Manhattan Bridge in New York City. Moisseiff, along with the project engineers Joseph Strauss and.