American Scientist

An era of great bridge building in America ended with the 1930s, when the George Washington, Golden Gate, San Francisco–Oakland Bay and other structurally significant but lesser known bridges were completed. The first two had record-setting main suspension spans of 3,500 and 4,200 feet, respectively, whereas the third, at 75 million Depression dollars, was the most expensive bridge project to date. The decade also saw the completion in 1931 of the Bayonne Bridge, at 1,652 feet then the longest arch bridge in the world, bettering, but only by 2 feet, the more well-known Sydney Harbour Bridge, completed the following year. The Bayonne, which connects New York's Staten Island with New Jersey, also won the American Institute for Steel Construction's award for most beautiful bridge, beating out the George Washington in the 1931 competition. (The Bayonne held the record for the world's largest steel-arch bridge until 1977, when the New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville, West Virginia, was completed with a span of 1,700 feet.) The 1930s also marked the completion of some of the most distinctive Oregon Coast bridges (see Engineering May–June 1996) and many other familiar landmarks in the American highway infrastructure.