On THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

January 24th

On THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
People that worked on the Golden Gate Bridge:

Joseph Strauss

Joseph Strauss designed a 55 mile long bridge over the Bering Strait as his graduate thesis. He created the initial design for the bridge, but was very inexperienced. He was born in Ohio to a musician mother and artist father. He personally campaigned for many years to have the bridge built. He was an amateur poet. He asked that a net be constructed during the creation of the bridge, which saved 19 lives. He downplayed the contributions of the other engineers working on the project, wishing to take the credit for himself. A statue of Strauss stands near the bridge.

Irving Morrow

Irving Morrow designed the towers, lighting and decoration of the bridge. He decided to paint it international orange. He was schooled at Berkeley and in Paris, was a resident of the bay area, and was relatively unknown. He created the bridge as much as a sculpture a roadway.



Charles Alton Ellis

Charles Alton Ellis was the principal engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. He was a Greek scholar and mathematician who became a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, and wrote the standard textbook of structural design. Fired in 1931, he continued to work full time on the project for no pay. In 2007 he was given major credit for design of the bridge. He collaborated extensively with Leon Moiseiff.

Leon Moiseiff

Leon Moiseiff was born in Latvia and came to the U.S. at the age of 19. He designed many famous suspension bridges, including the Manhattan Bridge. He designed the basic structure of the Golden Gate Bridge, working with Ellis from afar by telegram. He is most famous for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which fluttered itself into disaster in 1940, given too much leeway to be flexible and twisting violently in a storm. He was the most famous of the designers, and later the most notorious.


STRAUSS: Ellis, I’m taking you off the project.
ELLIS: What? Why?
STRAUSS: You’ve been making too many telegrams to this Moiseiff character.
ELLIS: Moiseiff? He’s the greatest suspension bridge designer in America! He laid out this whole bridge! Of course I’m gonna wire the guy, every chance I get!
STRAUSS: I laid out this bridge, I tell, ya! Not Moiseiff! Moisieff is a Rusk! He’s as pinko as this sunburned hand!
ELLIS: Look, Joe, you and I both know that Leon Moiseiff has got nothing to do with this. You want all the credit for this damned bridge to yourself.
STRAUSS: Ridiculous. You’re out, Clifford Paine is in.
ELLIS: Clifford Paine can’t finish this bridge without my help. He doesn’t got the knowhow. I wrote the book on bridges!
STRAUSS: Look you. I don’t care what you wrote, you fraud. I’m sick of you acting like I’m some kind of amateur. When people look at this bridge, one name is gonna enter their heads: Joseph Strauss! I’m gonna have a statue of me built, and my words are gonna be splayed all over this bridge, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it!
ELLIS: Hey, Joe, come on. I don’t got no job after this, I can’t do anything else. It’s a nightmare out there, it’s the depression. If you fire me from this job I’m gonna come back every day until this bridge goes all the way from here to Marin county, whether you wanna pay me or not. If you can live with that, if you can see my wife and kids starve, then go ahead, fire me. Put up your statue, you’ll get a great view of it from Hell.
STRAUSS: GET OUTTA HERE!
ELLIS: ASK MOISEIFF! He’ll tell you I’m the only one who can build this bridge!
STRAUSS: I SAID GET OUT!
ELLIS: ASK MOISEIFF!
STRAUSS: Don’t make me throw you out of this office with my bare hands! I’ll throw you right into San Francisco Bay!
ELLIS: All right I’ll leave. But fuck you! Fuck you and your fucking bridge! It’s ugly as Hell anyway.