Designed and built by the British firm Dorman Long under the direction of the engineer John Bradfield, the bridge took eight years to build and spans 503 meters (1,650 feet). Its opening, in the depths of the Great Depression, drew hundreds of thousands of people. The ceremony was famously upstaged when Francis de Groot, a member of a right-wing paramilitary group, rode forward on horseback and slashed the ribbon with his sword before Premier Jack Lang could cut it.
Sydneysiders had argued about a bridge across their harbour for almost a century before construction began in 1924. John Bradfield, the chief engineer, oversaw a project that demolished some 800 homes on the northern and southern approaches, with no compensation for their owners. The two halves of the arch were built out from each shore, held back by steel cables anchored in tunnels, until they met in August 1930.
The opening on Saturday, March 19, 1932, was a vast public festival. Premier Jack Lang, a Labor politician loathed by the conservative New Guard movement, was to cut the ribbon. Before he could, Francis de Groot, a New Guard member in military uniform, spurred his horse forward and slashed it with a sword, declaring the bridge open "in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales". Police pulled him from the saddle, the ribbon was retied, and Lang cut it properly.
The bridge's arch carries rail, road and pedestrian traffic, and locals soon nicknamed it "the Coathanger". Its steel expands in summer heat, so the top of the arch rises and falls by up to 18 centimeters (seven inches).
Key people: John Bradfield, Jack Lang, Francis de Groot