The Golden Gate Bridge is acclaimed as one of the world's most beautiful bridges and with its tremendous towers, sweeping main cables and great span, it is a sensory beauty featuring color, sound, and light. The Bridge can be a very busy place, particularly during the summer months. It is estimated that about nine million people from around the world visit the Bridge each year (1989 survey by San Francisco Convention and Visitor Bureau).
The Golden Gate Bridge, completed after more than four years of construction at a cost of $35 million, opened to vehicular traffic on May 28, 1937 at twelve o'clock noon when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House announcing the event. The GGB opening was ahead of schedule and under budget.
The Golden Gate Bridge design echoes an Art Deco Theme. Wide, vertical ribbing on the horizontal tower bracing accents the sun's light on the bridge.
The towers that support the Golden Gate Bridge's suspension cables are smaller at the top than at the base, emphasizing the tower height of 500 feet above the roadway. Irving Morrow—an architect hired by Strauss to design an architectural treatment for the bridge—chose the 'international orange' paint color to blend with the setting while still being very visible to ships.
Coit Tower is another San Francisco landmark with an Art Deco design. Timothy Pflueger was probably the most prolific and renowned Art Deco Architect in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." -- Lao Tzu
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