The Mount Hope Bridge was immediately hailed as both a triumph of engineering and a remarkably beautiful structure. Steinman began with an inherently graceful bridge form and gave special attention to the artistic design of the entire project. Theodore E. Blake, who had designed the Congressional office buildings in Washington and the New York Public Library, served as consulting architect and designed the tollbooth, now gone, and the guardhouse on the Portsmouth side. Local architects Howe and Church remodeled an existing summer house for the Mount Hope Bridge administration office, and a landscape architect used native plants to enhance the approaches to the bridge. Steinman had the bridge painted green, a novel break from the traditional black or gray, and installed decorative lighting along the cables and on the towers to illuminate the structure at night. As a result, the American Institute of Steel Construction gave the Mount Hope Bridge its Artistic Bridge Award in 1929. Five days after the pageant that marked the bridge's opening on October 24, 1929, the stock market crash marked the beginning of the Great Depression. The decline in toll revenues forced the company to reorganize, but the Mount Hope Bridge Corporation continued to operate the bridge privately until 1955, when the state took ownership. The Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority assumed control in 1964 and continues to operate this bridge and the Newport Pell Bridge.