Building the Golden Gate Bridge

Silver Award Winner, 2016 Nautilus Book Award in Young Adult (YA) Non-Fiction

Moving beyond the familiar accounts of politics and the achievements of celebrity engineers and designers, Building the Golden Gate Bridge is the first book to primarily feature the voices of the workers themselves. This is the story of survivors who vividly recall the hardships, hazards, and victories of constructing the landmark span during the Great Depression.

Labor historian Harvey Schwartz has compiled oral histories of nine workers who helped build the celebrated bridge. Their powerful recollections chronicle the technical details of construction, the grueling physical conditions they endured, the small pleasures they enjoyed, and the gruesome accidents some workers suffered. The result is an evocation of working-class life and culture in a bygone era.

Most of the bridge builders were men of European descent, many of them the sons of immigrants. Schwartz also interviewed women: two nurses who cared for the injured and tolerated their antics, the wife of one 1930s builder, and an African American ironworker who toiled on the bridge in later years. These powerful stories are accompanied by stunning photographs of the bridge under construction.

An homage to both the American worker and the quintessential San Francisco landmark, Building the Golden Gate Bridge expands our understanding of Depression-era labor and California history and makes a unique contribution to the literature of this iconic span.

Gripping from beginning to end. . . . Schwartz has again succeeded in producing a powerful story of work and workers on the Pacific Coast. The book will be of immense value to social historians, labor historians, and California historians and is ideal for use in the classroom. Whatever your reason for picking up this book, you will be moved while reading. And, when finished, you will see the Gate in a new way.

[Building the Golden Gate Bridge] brings together the gripping first-person accounts of the backbreaking work, terrifying physical conditions, tragedies and triumphs that bridge workers experienced as the Golden Gate went up.

[F]ascinating. . . . this book paints a vivid portrait of those who were faced with the prospect of abject poverty during the Great Depression, and dipped into personal reserves of strength and character in order to survive. . . . [T]hanks to the diligent and painstaking work of Harvey Schwartz. . . their personal stories remain with us, inspire us, and remind us that after all the rhetoric, grand visions become a reality when very ordinary people work hard to accomplish the extraordinary.

Accompanied by stunning photographs, this is the powerful story of survivors who vividly recall the hardships, hazards and victories that were experienced by the construction workers, 11 of whom lost their lives.