Bay Bridge Work
Workers on the Bay Bridge in 1935. Photo: San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA
Photographs of the Bay Bridge under construction in 1935 and in 1994.
Maintenance workers hang precariously over bay in 1994. Photo: Rick Gerharter
Lewis Mumford on the Bay Bridge:
"The Bay Bridge, between San Francisco and Oakland, brought far greater damage than benefits to both cities: it pumped up a once unnecessary volume of private traffic between them, at a great expense in expressway building and at a great waste in time and tension, spent crawling through rush-hour congestion. This traffic eventually wiped out, by impoverishment, the excellent rapid transit that had been installed on the Bay Bridge [the Key System] a form of transportation that the citizens of San Francisco have now repentantly voted to restore [the BART system], at an expense far greater than the cost of the original system. The ferry ride across the bay from Oakland was one of the regions greatest recreational resources — an incomparable experience, so exhilarating, at almost any time of the day, that one often sought an excuse for making the journey. It was not a long ride — not more than twenty-five minutes or so, and certainly not longer than the present depressing rush-hour crawl over the bridge."
-- Lewis Mumford, 1963
Aerial view of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge under construction in 1935. Photo: San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA
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View of San Francisco and Bay Bridge from canoe, 1996.
Video: Chris Carlsson