Side elevation of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the water to the west: the whole steel arch spanning the harbour, with a pair of granite-faced pylons at each end, the Walsh Bay wharves at right and the north shore beyond. Clouded sky, low afternoon light; a yacht and launch in the foreground at right.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Dawes Point to Milsons Point

Pylons by Thomas S. Tait of John Burnet & Partners; steel by Dorman Long, with consulting engineer Ralph Freeman, under J. J. C. Bradfield. 1923 to 1932. Art Deco.

Size
Arch span 503 m, top of arch 134 m above the water, pylons 89 m
Material
Steel arch; concrete pylons faced in Moruya granite
Status
State Heritage Register. Road, rail and footpath; a museum in one pylon

The pylons hold up nothing. The abutments beneath them carry the load. They were added to frame the arch and to calm people who didn’t trust a bare steel span, and their stepped granite is why the bridge is here among the Deco buildings. Architecture Australia has written of the exhilaration of Art Deco verticals on Tait’s pylons, though other sources give them no style at all. About 250 masons moved with their families to a settlement at Moruya to cut 18,000 cubic metres of granite, which was numbered and shipped north. Dorman Long and Bradfield fell out so badly over the credit that a large brass plaque was bolted to one of the granite columns to make the matter clear.

Read about Art Deco in Sydney

Sources

  1. Sydney Harbour Bridge, Wikipedia
  2. Bridging Sydney (review by James Weirick), Architecture Australia, 1 March 2007, ArchitectureAu
  3. Letters, Architecture Australia, March 1999 (Michael Neary), ArchitectureAu
  4. Moruya, New South Wales, Wikipedia