After much design work, two truss bridges at 6th and 9th and a cantilever bridge at 7th were approved, and submitted to the Metropolitan Art Commission, a forgotten body that had approval rights for any bridge over $25,000 in the City of Pittsburgh. Expecting a rubber stamp, contracts were let, but to everyone's shock the commission vetoed the designs as unaesthetic, preferring suspension bridges. But shoreline clearances were tight and two of the older suspension bridges had experienced problems with insecure anchorages. It is not clear who suggested a self-anchoring suspension bridge design, as the only precedent known at that time was a 1915 bridge over the Rhine at Cologne the Deutzer Hängebrücke.