A Sublime Symbol

The engineers who helped erect the Golden Gate Bridge wanted to paint it an aluminum color. The Navy wanted it in black and yellow stripes, to make it more visible to shipping. The present red-orange color originally was a temporary undercoating, to have been covered over later by something else.

But Irving Morrow, a consulting architect on the bridge project, argued long and hard for the more natural red-orange, and red-orange prevailed. Ah, that aesthetics should always emerge victorious in engineering projects.

The color, of course, is only one element that gives the Golden Gate Bridge a sublime eloquence. With its sweeping, graceful design, the bridge has become the American symbol of the Far West just as the Statue of Liberty is of the East. Rarely has an engineering project ever dared try to improve on a natural setting, particularly a setting as majestic as the gate itself.

But to many, old photos of the Golden Gate without the Golden Gate Bridge seem hauntingly incomplete, like a painter’s canvas with a void in the center foreground.

Wreathed in fog or bathed in the afterglow of the sunset, the bridge seems eternally new and refreshing. Thus, it is hard to believe that the bridge’s 50th anniversary is being celebrated by San Franciscans this week. This is more than just the commemoration of an engineering event, or even an artistic triumph. The opening of the bridge half a century ago also was a psychological triumph of the American spirit as the nation struggled to shake off the paralysis of the Great Depression.

The bridge is only a thing, of course, and some day will crumble before nature. But the Golden Gate Bridge enjoys a special hold on people, including, unfortunately, those who choose it as a spot to end troubled lives. Even so, after half a century, the bridge still symbolizes the best of human aspirations: a combination of strength and grace that does justice to a magnificent natural setting.