The aesthetics of the span, especially the striking granite-faced tower pylons, were handled by consulting architects Sir John Burnet and Partners. The government had to clear hundreds of houses from the northern and southern approaches to the bridge.
Many homes in the area between the Rocks and Darling Harbour had already been bought by the government during the outbreak of bubonic plague of Medal awarded to Vincent Kelly after surviving a metre fall from the bridge in The first sod was turned for the building of the bridge in July , a full six months before tenders closed for the construction contract.
This marked the start of work on the approaches to the bridge. Construction on the actual span did not begin until the laying of the foundation stone for one of the southern abutments on 26 March The four abutments are the load-bearing foundation of the bridge and from these the arch, which supports the road and rail deck, was built outwards simultaneously from the north and south.
The granite for the foundations and the distinctive pylons that rise from the abutments was quarried at Moruya on the south coast of NSW. More than stonemasons and their families, mainly from Scotland and Italy, were brought to Australia to work in the quarry.
Arch construction began on 26 October In total more than 52, tonnes of steel were used; 39, tonnes in the arch alone. Slowly the main span of the bridge was erected by cantilevering the two half arches towards each other from each shore.
The arches were stabilised by steel cables anchored in tunnels excavated into the bedrock on each embankment. Crowds on the Sydney Harbour Bridge after the opening ceremony, National Library of Australia obj On 19 August the two halves of the arch were joined, making the bridge self-supporting and allowing the cables to be removed.
With the span complete, vertical hangers were attached to the arch and from these the bridge deck could be built. How the work was done Engineers started work for the bridge by demolishing around homes and commercial buildings on the north shore.
New South Wales government website. More about this project sydney-harbour-bridge. Explore more civil engineering projects.
Kalgoorlie Super Pit. Kishore Ramdeen Civil Engineer. Dominic Cronin Civil Engineer. Andy Mitchell Civil Engineer. Anusha Shah Civil Engineer.
John Smeaton Civil Engineer. Sakthy Selvakumaran Civil Engineer. Bryn Noble Civil Engineer. Bianca Wheeler Civil Engineer. Ceremony of the beginning of the works, so-called "turning of the first sod", was held on 28 July First part of the work was constructing of the approaches, preparing of the foundations for support of the arch and construction of the abutment towers. Arch construction began on 26 October Both sides of the arch were built at the same time but southern was built a little ahead of the northern in case some errors appear and to improve the alignment.
Two halves of the arches met on 19 August and were able to support themselves. Under the Act, tenders were called to construct a bridge between Dawes and Milsons Point. Tenders were closed on 16 January The winning tenderer was the British engineering firm of Dorman, Long and Co. The contract was signed on 24 March One of the conditions of the tender was that materials had to be sourced and manufactured in NSW where possible.
Granite for the piers and pylons was quarried at Moruya on the NSW south coast, and just over twenty percent of the steel was produced in Australia. The remainder of the steel was manufactured in England. Obviously Bradfield had a long association with the design of the Bridge but Ralph Freeman, as the consulting engineer for Dorman Long, also had claim to be the Bridge designer. Freeman was responsible for completing the final drawings under the terms of the contract.
A bitter rivalry developed between the two men. Over 2, people were employed to work on the bridge, including engineers, boilermakers, ironworkers and stonemasons. Although the workers were overwhelmingly Australian, the workforce had a multi-national character, with skilled labourers, such as stonemasons and ironworkers, brought from overseas. Sixteen men died while working on the bridge, and accidents on the job were frequent, due to the hazardous nature of the work.
For example, the job of the rivet cooker involved throwing red-hot rivets to the rivet catchers, who caught the rivets in buckets and then hammered them into place. Nevertheless, Bridge workers received relatively good wages and conditions, and although the unions were vigilant, there was minimal industrial action in the eight years it took to complete the Bridge. The road deck was laid soon after, and work began on building the pylons, which anchor the Bridge at either end.
The Bridge pylons were faced with granite, as a nod to more traditional bridge design. By February , the Bridge was completed. That month, the strength of the deck was tested with ninety-six locomotives laid end to end along the railway tracks on the eastern side of the Bridge.
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