<P> The bridge's name was first used when the project was initially discussed in 1917 by M.M. O'Shaughnessy, city engineer of San Francisco, and Strauss . The name became official with the passage of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act by the state legislature in 1923, creating a special district to design, build and finance the bridge . San Francisco and most of the counties along the North Coast of California joined the Golden Gate Bridge District, with the exception being Humboldt County, whose residents opposed the bridge's construction and the traffic it would generate . </P> <P> Strauss was chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project . However, because he had little understanding or experience with cable - suspension designs, responsibility for much of the engineering and architecture fell on other experts . Strauss's initial design proposal (two double cantilever spans linked by a central suspension segment) was unacceptable from a visual standpoint . The final graceful suspension design was conceived and championed by Leon Moisseiff, the engineer of the Manhattan Bridge in New York City . </P> <P> Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco elements, such as the tower decorations, streetlights, railing, and walkways . The famous International Orange color was originally used as a sealant for the bridge . The US Navy had wanted it to be painted with black and yellow stripes to ensure visibility by passing ships . </P> <P> Senior engineer Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with Moisseiff, was the principal engineer of the project . Moisseiff produced the basic structural design, introducing his "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers . Although the Golden Gate Bridge design has proved sound, a later Moisseiff design, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, collapsed in a strong windstorm soon after it was completed, because of an unexpected aeroelastic flutter . Ellis was also tasked with designing a "bridge within a bridge" in the southern abutment, to avoid the need to demolish Fort Point, a pre--Civil War masonry fortification viewed, even then, as worthy of historic preservation . He penned a graceful steel arch spanning the fort and carrying the roadway to the bridge's southern anchorage . </P>

What was the original color of the golden gate bridge