Building Bridges (2 Letters) - NYTimes.com Re "A Bridge Built to Sway When the Earth Shakes" (Feb. 7): This article neglected to mention that China, not the United States, is producing the gleaming new steel decks of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Once upon a time, America built big things. There existed a golden age of bridge construction, particularly in New York City, which built between 1883 and 1964 the Brooklyn Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge, the Queensboro Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. All were engineering marvels. Many were built during difficult economic times. All were built with American-made steel and other American-made products. America is no longer capable of building (or rebuilding) American-made large-scale bridges, and the most depressing part of the story is in the decline of American steel - an indispensable material in building bridges and other public works. China's policies have given Chinese steel a tremendous competitive advantage. Joan Marans Dim Brooklyn Antonio Masi Garden City, N.Y. The writers are the authors of "New York's Golden Age of Bridges." As a member of the Engineering Design Advisory Panel that advised and recommended the selection of the new span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, I wish to call attention to Herbert Rothman, of Weidlinger Engineers in New York, as the true conceptual designer of the structure. His design of a self-anchored suspension bridge was presented to us and selected for development by T. Y. Lin International. He should be given full recognition for his innovative and creative work. Ephraim G. Hirsch San Francisco