Notoriety surrounding the Ambassador Bridge was never so great as the day it opened to traffic on Nov. 11, 1929.

At 1,850 feet between its main anchorages, the span was an architectural marvel and laid claim to being the longest suspension bridge in the world. Detroit and Windsor, Ontario no longer had to depend on ferry boats to facilitate travel and trade. Completion of the bridge was the apex of astounding growth in the region that took place during the 1920s - which all came to a grinding halt in late October 1929 with the crash of the stock market and the beginning of the Great Depression.

As the busiest international border crossing in the nation, the span cost $23.5 million to build but has easily paid for itself over the years with user fees. Built rock-solid, the bridge's owners have never skimped on maintenance, and today, the bridge stands ready to serve international travelers for decades to come.

"I would say it has been a very well-maintained bridge," said Steve Vlahakis, owner of Seaway Painting. "When we painted it, we went down to bare metal, and we took off maybe five or ten coats. I really believe the lead paint they used over the years helped preserve the metal on that bridge, because we never saw anything more than surface rust."

The company employed 12 union painters in 1999-2000 when three coats of teal paint were applied to one of the bridge's towers and part of the superstructure, as part of a project that saw the span completely repainted.

Since the day it opened, The Ambassador Bridge has provided steady if unspectacular service. Originally painted gloss black, it remained that color until the 1950s, when the bridge's owners decided to try aluminum paint. The experiment failed when they later found that heavy downriver pollution was covering the bridge with a sooty black.

The bridge's original pavement - granite blocks set in sand - was replaced by asphalt in 1952. A necklace of lights were added to the bridge main cables about a decade ago. Throughout the 1990s, improvements have been made to both customs facilities and approach areas.

The Ambassador didn't own the title "World's Longest Suspension Bridge" for very long. The span over the Detroit River was surpassed in length in 1931 with the completion of the George Washington Bridge in New York, which was built nearly twice as long as the Ambassador.

"The Ambassador Bridge was limited by the technology at the time, but that's not a bad thing," said Gongkang Fu, associate professor of civil engineering at Wayne State University. "The engineers at the time built conservatively. The bridges were overbuilt. No one was sure how long the bridge would last, so they made the cables bigger, and they put in thicker steel."

The first plan to build a bridge over the Detroit River in the early 1920s was deemed too ambitious. One New York engineer came forward with a plan to build a two-level bridge that would accommodate automobiles, trains, street cars and pedestrians.

A more realistic and less expensive plan sprang up a few years later, brought forth by American Transit Co. President Joseph Bower and financier John Austin. They were able to sell the idea of building the bridge to the U.S. President, the Governor-General of Canada, Congress, the Canadian Parliament, the State of Michigan, the Province of Ontario, and various maritime associations - everyone but Detroit Mayor John W. Smith. His objection: the bridge's users would pay for its cost and debt service, and eventually would pay a perpetual profit to the owners.

Mayor Smith's objections later led to a referendum in the City of Detroit, and voters favored building the bridge by an 8-1 margin during an election on June 28, 1927.

Boring operations for the bridge had actually started six weeks earlier, because the builders had to meet a federally imposed deadline to start. The general contract for the bridge was signed on July 20, 1927, with engineering and construction awarded to the McClintic-Marshall Co. of Pittsburgh.

With building trades workers nearly ready to suspend the bridge deck from the cables, word came on Feb. 22, 1929 that there were numerous broken heat-treated wires in cable on the nearly completed Mount Hope suspension bridge in Rhode Island. That was bad news, since the Ambassador Bridge was using the same kind of cable.

Cold-drawn wire had been used on bridges for half a century, but the Ambassador Bridge designers opted to go with heat-treated wire cables, which had a much higher tensile strength than the cold-drawn steel wire.

A subsequent inspection of the Ambassador Bridge revealed a few broken strands - but not wanting to take a chance, Bower decided to eat the half-million-dollar cost of replacing the cables. The old cables were replaced in time for the bridge to open on Nov. 11, 1929 - which was still nine months ahead of schedule.

The Ambassador Bridge's two main towers rise 386 feet above the Detroit River, and are anchored 105 feet into the bedrock below the river. The entire length of the bridge is 7,490 feet.

No one knows if the bridge would be in the same good condition today if the heat-treated cables were kept in place. Professor Fu said there are about 50 suspension bridges in the U.S., and inspecting them is difficult because they can't be opened up easily.

Today, he said, suspension bridges are built most often in the Far East, and engineers are "pushing the envelope" of technology with ever-longer spans and the use of lighter materials. If the Ambassador span is maintained properly, Fu said, "even today we still don't have a good answer about how long it will last."

THE AMBASSADOR BRIDGE, once the longest suspension bridge in the world, now ranks 30th. Original plans called for the bridge to be built with 135 feet of clearance over the Detroit River, but concerns over the height of future ships led designers to raise the center of the bridge to 152 feet over the river. From end to end, the bridge is 7,490 feet.

BUILDING TRADES WORKERS toil near the top of the north tower of the Ambassador Bridge, about 386 feet above the Detroit River. This photo was taken on Nov. 14, 1928.
Photo courtesy Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University