Gateway Arch

The Gateway Arch is a 630-foot-tall steel monument that serves as the main attraction of Gateway Arch National Park on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. The arch symbolizes the role of St. Louis in the United States' westward expansion during the nineteenth century. Millions of people visit the Gateway Arch every year. Visitors enjoy riding the tram to the observation deck at the arch's top and viewing St. Louis from the windows. The Gateway Arch is considered one of the most recognizable symbols of the city.

In 1947, Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen won a national contest to design a monument honoring the United States' spread westward. Americans in the early nineteenth century believed expanding to the Pacific Ocean was their birthright, and many settlers of the western frontier set out from St. Louis on their way across the Mississippi River.

Construction of the Gateway Arch began in 1963 and was completed in 1965. Gateway Arch National Park, renamed in 2018 and formerly known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, encompasses landscaped acres surrounding the main historical exhibits of the park. These include the Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse of St. Louis. The park's Museum and Visitor Center, located beneath the arch, formerly existed as the Museum of Westward Expansion.

Background

The westward expansion that the Gateway Arch commemorates occurred in the early nineteenth century. President Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801, and he wanted the United States to claim what he saw as its birthright—all the land west of the Mississippi River. Jefferson believed the free nation of the United States could survive only if its people remained morally righteous, and he asserted that this righteousness depended upon the hard work that accompanied ownership of property. At the start of the century, Jefferson felt the United States was too small to accommodate farmland for the growing population of Americans. In his view, the country needed to expand westward.

Jefferson began this expansion in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. This was the US government's acquisition of more than eight hundred thousand square miles of French-owned land that stretched from New Orleans in Louisiana to the Rocky Mountains. The United States continued acquiring western territory from other sovereign powers throughout the rest of the century. In 1819, the US government negotiated a deal with Spain to obtain Florida. Texas declared independence from Mexico in the 1830s and then sought to become a US state. The United States finally acquired it in 1845.

By this time, the United States' spread across North America seemed inevitable. In 1845, journalist John O'Sullivan invented the phrase Manifest Destiny to describe what he believed was the United States' divine right to acquire western lands. Over the next few years, the United States obtained Oregon and more than five hundred thousand square miles in the modern-day Southwest. Mexico had ceded this land to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American War (1846–48) in 1848. It included all or parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. The United States had obtained most of its current North American land holdings by the end of the nineteenth century.

Throughout the century, thousands of Americans set out in covered wagons for the western frontier from various Midwestern cities. These included St. Louis, Kansas City, and Independence, Missouri; Council Bluffs, Iowa; and Omaha, Nebraska. Americans ventured into Oregon, California, and other western locations from all these cities and more, but it was St. Louis that eventually claimed the nickname "Gateway to the West."

One reason for this is that the Lewis and Clark expedition departed from the city in 1804. Jefferson had commissioned explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to travel through the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase and learn about its geography and other features. St. Louis itself started expanding in the 1810s, as it became an important urban center for Americans hoping to head west or trade the furs they had acquired on the frontier.

Many cities throughout the Midwest later claimed to have been important departure points for nineteenth-century pioneers, with St. Louis always counted among them. Plans for memorializing the city's historical significance to westward expansion began to develop in the early twentieth century, but it would take several decades for the Gateway Arch to become a reality.

Overview

Plans for the Gateway Arch and what was originally known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial that encompassed it began with St. Louis city employee Luther Ely Smith, who in 1933 proposed to the city government that a monument to the United States' westward expansion be built along the Mississippi River in St. Louis. Smith's idea was widely unpopular at first. The US economy was stagnant in the midst of the Great Depression (1929–39), and the leaders and citizens of St. Louis thought that spending government funds on an expensive national memorial would be a colossal waste. However, a city vote in 1935 revealed a majority of respondents now approved of the project, and plans for the endeavor progressed. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was officially created as a national memorial in 1935.

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association then formed and started acquiring permission to condemn and destroy the dilapidated buildings situated on the waterfront where the memorial park was to be built. On this expanse of forty city blocks, a monument and various buildings would be erected to honor St. Louis's role in westward expansion. However, the United States' entry into World War II (1939–45) in 1941 stalled the proceedings.

In 1947, the planning association held a national competition to find the best architectural design for the westward expansion monument, which was to be the centerpiece of the memorial. Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen eventually won the contest with his design for a soaring arch. The structure was to be an inverted catenary, the U-shaped curve that a chain or rope assumes when each end is suspended from a fixture. Saarinen intended his arch to honor Jefferson and the country's westward spread and to serve as a visually striking national landmark.

The ground breaking for the arch was held in 1959. Saarinen died two years later of a brain tumor. Construction of the arch began in February 1963 and lasted for two and a half years. The process was much less difficult than had been expected. While five thousand workers were initially estimated to be required for construction, fewer than one hundred ultimately built the arch. Although a risk-assessment company predicted that thirteen workers would likely die during construction, no one actually did. The $13-million construction project was completed on October 28, 1965, and the Gateway Arch opened to the public in June 1967.

The Gateway Arch's foundations are set 60 feet (18.2 meters) in the ground. The stainless steel structure is 630 feet (192 meters) high and weighs more than 17,000 tons (15.4 million kilograms). The arch was designed to sway 18 inches (45.7 centimeters) to withstand harsh winds and earthquakes. Visitors to the arch may purchase tickets to take its interior tram to the observation deck at the top. The deck is 65 feet long (19.8 meters) and a little more than 7 feet (2.1 meters) wide. Each side of the deck features sixteen windows about 27 inches (68.5 centimeters) wide and 7 inches (17.7 centimeters) high. Viewers can see the city of St. Louis from the western windows and the Mississippi River and neighboring Illinois from the eastern side.

Below the arch is almost one hundred acres of landscaped park for visitors to enjoy. The underground Museum of Westward Expansion sat beneath the Gateway Arch from the mid-1970s to 2015. It featured exhibits on the Lewis and Clark expedition, the United States' westward spread, and the role St. Louis played in these events. The museum closed in 2015 to make way for a new museum featuring more modern exhibits with interactive displays. The new museum, opened in 2018, tells the story of Jefferson's hope for the young United States and, more comprehensively than before, the country's actual westward expansion. Including a broader range of time both before and after the 1800s, the new exhibits were designed to provide a more complete understanding of the time and its influence. This goal also meant incorporating and acknowledging issues such as the removal of American Indians from tribal lands. Additionally, one of the exhibits recounts the history of the Gateway Arch's construction. Other modifications to the site involved the addition of a pedestrian access walkway.

The other primary feature of the Gateway Arch National Park is the Old Courthouse. This is where Dred Scott, an enslaved Black man, first sued for his freedom in the 1840s. Scott believed that he should be granted freedom because he had previously lived with his enslaver in the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited. Scott's case eventually went to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in 1857's Dred Scott v. Sandford that enslaved people were not American citizens and were not protected under the law. In 1866, this decision was overturned by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave those who had been formerly enslaved citizenship and equal protection under the law. Visitors to the park can tour the Old Courthouse for free. A statue of Dred and Harriet Scott was dedicated in 2012, and renovations of the courthouse began in 2023.

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