"There had never been a bridge like the Golden Gate Bridge
and there had never been a job like the job of building it"
Some photos of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge from 1933-1937. The second photo is of a bridge worker named Ed Souza; whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I worked in Sausalito in the early nineties. He is featured in the CBS video (1983) below, about the builders of the bridge. A monumental achievement made by very brave men.
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The old Sylva mansion in Sausalito, Ca. Built in 1897, it was the home of Adolph Sylva a notorious political boss at the turn of the century. Sylva was a Latin and Greek scholar, musician, actor, chicken farmer, lawyer and politician. He was Town Trustee and eventually the Mayor of Sausalito, although his career included accusations of corruption and illegal activities. In 1901 an assassination attempt on Sylva failed when an explosive device was thrown at the house but instead exploded in a tree. The house gained even more notoriety in 1932 when Lester Gillis (aka. George "Baby Face" Nelson), the infamous Chicago gangster, lived in the mansion when he fled to the West Coast after escaping from Joliet State Prison. Originally built in 1879, the ferry boat Vallejo taxied on San Francisco bay from 1898-1947. Saved from being scrapped in 1949 by artist Jean Varda, the Vallejo became home to artists, beatniks, and hippies in the houseboat community of Sausalito. Varda, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts and a host of bohemians lived and partied on the Vallejo in the '50's, and '60's. I had the opportunity to visit an artist client who was living aboard in 1986 (b/w photo). By that time the boat was a dilapidated wreck, a survivor of the Sausalito houseboat wars of the late seventies when the city put an end to anchor-outs and squatters. After being bought by a corporation in 1999, work began to restore and remodel it into an incredible, historic houseboat that floats in it's original berth, now behind security gates.
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September 2021
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