'A Wild Flight Of The Imagination: The Story Of The Golden Gate Bridge' Reveals Early Designs (PHOTOS)

Seventy-five years after it’s construction, the Golden Gate Bridge is still as stunningly beautiful as it has always been.

But a current exhibit at the California Historical Society reveals that the original plans for the iconic bridge did not quite resemble what we now know and love.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PICTURES)

The title of the exhibition, "A Wild Flight of the Imagination: the Story of the Golden Gate Bridge," comes from the 1921 promotional prospectus for the Golden Gate Bridge, and some of the early designs are indeed imaginative.

A few of design details that didn't make it past the drawing board: 50-foot high grandiose portals and stone chute walls at each entrance.

A slideshow at the exhibit includes a look back at the mouth of the bay 100 years before the bridge, and continues chronologically until the completion of the bridge in 1937. The exhibit also includes unique scrapbook clippings, film footage, images from the media campaign around the construction and telegrams between the San Francisco mayor and the War Department. Featured artists include Ansel Adams, Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lange.

Scroll through our slideshow, courtesy of the California Historical Society, and compare the original 1930s designs to the modern day Golden Gate Bridge: