Sydney Harbour Bridge

A steel through-arch bridge nicknamed "the Coathanger", an icon of Sydney alongside the Opera House.

The main arch spans about 503 metres, the whole bridge is 1,149 metres long, and the top stands 134 metres above the water. It carries eight lanes of traffic plus trains, cyclists and walkers. Its main roadway, the Bradfield Highway, is only about 2.4 kilometres long, one of the shortest highways in Australia.

Building the bridge

Work started on July 28, 1923, and finished in January 1932. The English firm Dorman Long built it under engineer John Bradfield. About 52,800 tonnes of steel were used, held together by roughly six million rivets driven in by hand.

The total cost was about 6.25 million Australian pounds, and the debt was not fully paid off until 1988.

Granite pylons and climbs

The four pylons are 89 metres tall and faced with granite. They do not hold the bridge up; they were added to balance the look and reassure the public.

Since 1998, visitors can join BridgeClimb to walk up the arch.

Dreams, granite and workers

People dreamed of crossing the harbour long before it was built. In 1825 the convict architect Francis Greenway wrote that such a bridge would bring glory to the colony. A worldwide design competition was held in 1900, and John Bradfield became chief engineer in 1914. The stone for the pylons came from a quarry at Moruya, 300 kilometres south of Sydney, where about 250 stonemasons and their families lived in a temporary settlement and cut 18,000 cubic metres of granite. Korean Wikipedia says more than 1,500 people worked on the bridge each year, which helped many families during the Great Depression.

On the globe

The model shows the big steel arch with its stone pylons. Look for the roadway hanging from the arch.