Summary

This is the second book by Eggers I’ve read. It’s actually a picture book for the younger set and granddaughter found it interesting until her eyes got heavy and she fell asleep before we finished. As the front fly indicated … This Bridge Will Not Be Gray is a joyful history lesson in picture book form – a gorgeously crafted story that teaches us how beauty and inspiration tend to come from the most unexpected places. Some things I learned while reading are: 1) Some people wanted the bridge to be painted red and white, others thought yellow and black appropriate and those who wanted it gray wondered who would object to such a serious color. 2) One man wanted the bridge painted orange. His name was Irving Morrow, a local man and an architect. 3) He designed the bridge. 4) He also liked the color of the first two towers which were built and soared 746 feet above water level. They were orange because they were painted with what was a “no frills anti-rust paint”. 5) The official color was called International Orange. 6) On any given day, painters are repainting some part of the bridge using 10,000 gallons of paint a year. The art work in the book is done by Tucker Nichols, another local resident of the San Francisco Bay Area.