There are busloads of tourists for the Arch, and cars come and go for events at the stadium, with block‐long garages filling and emptying, but no one lingers because there is nothing to linger for. The promised revitalization, in the sense of a downtown of pedestrian scale, alive with people and activities, has never materialized. It is easy to argue that now we know better. An artifact of the highway-building era, a product of eminent domain, the ground at its feet was designed so that you, vacationing tourist, you, suburban visitor, could drive in and drive out. Louis leaders supported the Arch, the Arch never embraced St. Clad in stainless steel, its simple form and grand height also gestured at the new American frontier: space.īut while generations of St.
Taller than the Washington Monument, the Arch provided a marker at the scale of the nation, far from the East Coast. It was situated from whence William Clark and Meriwether Lewis launched their 1804 explorations due west, with then-President Thomas Jefferson’s blessing. The Arch, seen as a symbol of American ambition, was finally completed in 1965, almost 20 years after Eero Saarinen began his career independent of his famous architect father by winning a design competition for the monument in 1947. Yes, the square named for the father of the Arch was separated from his baby by Interstate 44. “We are standing on the highway,” she said. It is so seamless, so obvious, that, on my tour, Gateway Arch Park Foundation communications director Samantha Fisher stopped me for a moment to marvel. Courtesy of Gateway Arch Park Foundation.Ī grassy land bridge over the highway, designed by project lead Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), creates a seamless transition between Luther Ely Smith Square in front of the courthouse and a new entrance to the Arch and its museum. Previously, the city and the Arch were connected by narrow concrete walkways over the highway. Outside, landscape architect Dan Kiley’s midcentury design has been preserved, as befits a National Historic Landmark, but improved in its links to and access for everyone in the city.Ī view of MVVA’s land bridge over I-44. Louis as a gateway on their journeys westward, alongside details of the city’s own growth. Inside the museum, history has been rewritten to include the peoples already living in what would become the western half of the United States and whose rights were trampled upon by those who used St. The $380 million megaproject-which touched everything but the Arch, which is, as I said, perfect-offers a succinct and positive statement of where we are today in city-building. On July 3, a partnership of public and private funders, including the National Park Service, Gateway Arch Park Foundation, Bi-State Development Agency, Jefferson National Parks Association, and Great Rivers Greenway, will officially open what is now known as Gateway Arch National Park, a renovated 91-acre landscape above a renovated and expanded 150,000-square-foot museum and visitor center.
Louis could get visitors to stay, even for an extra half-day, it could produce the economic equivalent of a second Cardinals baseball season. Where once the soaring symbol was a potent enough attraction, now, the city realized, it had become a drive-in, drive-out phenomenon. A family of arches for the families that have always flocked to the Arch-albeit, in recent years, in declining numbers. Earrings, keychains, sidewalk stencils, neon beer signs, temporary tattoos, T-shirts. Louis if you haven’t been to the Arch yet. Should it fall out of sight, some sign or souvenir will remind you where you are, suggesting that you haven’t been anywhere in St. You snap a picture, walk a few blocks, snap another and another. Louis.Īs you walk downtown, the Arch appears at the end of every broad street, framing rooflines, slipping outside vertical walls, larger and more delicate than any other structure in town. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Gateway Arch, a 630-foot-tall catenary curve-designed by Eero Saarinen and clad in stainless steel-stands on the west bank of the Mississippi River in St.
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