My first trip to Lisbon was full of surprises.
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The biggest shock was the San Francisco-style hills that pen in the capital city. The second was realizing that locals would rather speak English with me than Spanish.
Last was when I headed to the waterfront to soak up views of the Tagus… only to be met with a massive suspension bridge that looked suspiciously like the Golden Gate Bridge.
The more my friend and I studied the bridge, from its cables to its orange color, the more we were struck by the similarities.
Comparing bridges across continents might not sound thrilling, but civil and architectural projects from top-notch firms unite the world, such as Zaha Hadid. And it’s one of my greatest travel nerd-outs to spot sister projects. (If you’ve ever spotted a Frank Lloyd Wright house, you get the nerdery that’s at play here.)
Spotting the 25 de Abril Bridge in Lisbon spurred on questions that led me down a rabbit hole.
One that eventually led to some of the US’s grandest construction landmarks.
Ever wondered what Lisbon’s big orange suspension bridge has in common with the Flatiron Building in New York City? Or the Sears Tower in Chicago? Or the Superdome in New Orleans? Let’s dig in.
25 de Abril Bridge, aka Ponte 25 de Abril
Let’s start with the basics. The 25 de Abril Bridge unites Lisbon with Almada across the Tagus River, spanning almost 10,500 feet; for comparison’s sake, the Golden Gate is only 8,980.
Starting in the late 1800s, companies and civil agents began the long and grueling process of submitting plans for a bridge, then waiting for approval. Decades of unsuccessful submissions delayed the project by almost a century.
Then, in 1960, the United States Steel Export Company won the bid to construct the bridge, which would also provide access to the recently constructed Cristo-Rei monument in Almada. The project took off and was completed in only six years.
(If you’ve heard of the American School of Lisbon, it was actually formed during this time to educate children of engineers who headed from the US to Lisbon.)
But American Steel wasn’t the company that was contracted to design the bridge—they were simply constructing it.
So, why does the 25 de Abril Bridge look so much like the Golden Gate Bridge, even down to the very same International Orange color?
Both were designed by the American Bridge Company, founded in 1900 and still active today. Part of the reason the company won the bid was that both Lisbon and San Francisco are prone to seismic activity.
Uniquely, there’s a third sister bridge in Edinburgh, the Forth Road Bridge. (I think that makes them triplet bridges?)
The American Bridge Company
The fact that San Francisco, Lisbon, and Edinburgh have almost identical bridges is intriguing enough… but what if I told you that the Golden Gate Bridge is far from the coolest project that the American Bridge Company has designed?
Close your eyes and imagine some of the most striking bridges in the United States—which ones come to mind?
The Brooklyn Bridge is probably one of the first; unfortunately, the American Bridge Company didn’t design this iconic landmark. However, it’s behind New York City’s second-best bridge, the Verrazzano.
And that’s just the start. These are a few other American Bridge Company projects in chronological order:
- Eads Bridge, Saint Louis (1874; at this time, the American Bridge Company was Keystone Bridge Company)
- Mackinac Bridge (1957)
- Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge (1964)
- New River Gorge Bridge (1977)
- Sunshine Skyway Bridge (1986)
The list keeps going…
That’s a pretty impressive list of bridge-building accomplishments, but don’t let the company’s name deceive you; the American Bridge Company has designed a lot more than just bridges.
Not only were its engineers adept at designing grand bridges that are both full of character and prepared to survive earthquakes, but they also helped design some of the United States’ greatest skyscrapers and arenas.
Buckle up—when you’re admiring the 25 de Abril Bridge in Lisbon, you’re looking at a project that was designed by engineers who also worked on:
- Flatiron Building (1902)
- Woolworth Building (1913)
- Chrysler Building (1930)
- Empire State Building (1931)
- Houston Astrodome (1964)
- US Steel Tower (1971)
- Sears Tower (1974)
- Louisiana Superdome (1974)
