Excerpt:
It was called the most beautiful bridge in the world. At the time of its 1931 opening, it certainly was the longest single span. To honor the engineering feat it represented, a stamp with its picture was issued, and the bridge became the subject of music, even a children's book.
Yet, a section of suspension cable for the George Washington Bridge in the collections of the National Museum of American History can only hint at such glories. Three feet in diameter and ten feet long, the massive cylinder weighs an ungainly 34,000 pounds. From its ends protrude 26,474 individual steel wires, compacted under 400 tons of pressure. Before computers, this experimental section helped engineers model the effects of compression on the finished bridge's cables. Today, it represents an engineering marvel, whose creation spanned half a century of depressions, politics and the passions of two of America's greatest bridge designers.
Annotation:
This Smithsonian Magazine article chronicles the tribulations of Othmarr Ammann, Gustav Lindenthal, and the construction of the George Washington bridge. The piece focuses primarily on the political side of the project, including the emergent tension between Ammann and Lindenthal, rather than the architectural details. However, author Valerie Jablow does talk about the tendency towards longer, narrower one-span bridges that Ammann furthered. Still, the article is useful for those more interested in the urban development aspects of bridge building than the scientific aspects.