AIA Presents:
Location:San Francisco, CA
Architect:Joseph Strauss, Chief Engineer; Charles Alton Ellis, Principal Engineer; Irving Morrow, Designer
Year Built:1937
Fact:The Golden Gate Bridge was the world’s longest suspension bridge when completed in 1937.

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Golden Gate Bridge
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Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and State Route 1, it connects the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed in 1937 and become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and California.

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It’s because it’s so graceful and that grace leads to really great beauty and I think as Marshall said a few minutes ago it’s also really one of the great iconic symbols that it’s something you have a memory of in your head when you mention it because of that grace and beauty and its originality.

Rod Henderer, AIA
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People just need to glimpse at it and say, “what does it symbolize?” It symbolizes, you know, the termination of our continent on the West Cost and the opening of our continent to the Pacific. People just live there. The defining of where the bay starts, where the open ocean begins. It connects one peninsula to another.

Marchall Purnell, FAIA, NOMAC
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