ST. LOUIS — St Louis’ Gateway Arch isn’t just a symbol of America and the country’s Western Expansion. The nation’s tallest monument represents a remarkable engineering feat with a fascinating history.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site in 1935 to commemorate the role of Thomas Jefferson and others in the nation’s westward expansion.
St. Louis citizens, including attorney and civic leader Luther Ely Smith, advocated for the project, which they hoped would revitalize the city’s deteriorating riverfront.
After World War II, private funds financed a two-part architectural competition to select a design. On May 18, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation authorizing the Arch’s construction and authorized federal funds to match city funds.
There were 172 entries, including submissions from prominent architectural firms, into the competition. Officials selected Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen’s design for a stainless-steel arch reaching 630 feet above the ground.
St. Louis Mayor Raymond R. Tucker ceremonially turned the first shovel of dirt during a groundbreaking ceremony on June 23, 1959, marking the project’s start. The location, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, is the 1764 site of St. Louis’ founding.
The first triangular stainless steel section was installed on February 12, 1963, and the exterior shell was completed on October 28, 1965. In 1967, before the Arch formally opened, Eisenhower visited the Arch and is reportedly the only U.S. president to have visited the top of the Arch.
The following year, on May 25, 1968, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall formally dedicated the Gateway Arch, which was built for $13 million. The vice president called the arch “a soaring curve in the sky that links the rich heritage of yesterday with the richer future of tomorrow,” the Associated Press reported.
“The reality in our dedicating this monument is in our own rededication to what it signifies,” Humphrey said in his remarks at the dedication, according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Our commitment, renewed here today, is to conserve and enrich the new America we are creating, in the cities, in the suburban areas, on the farm, that quality of life which characterized our past.
“None will leave this site without a renewed sense of the elemental qualities of beauty,” Humphrey added. “Whatever is shoddy, whatever is ugly, whatever is waste, whatever is false will be measured and condemned by this new standard of excellence.”
A subterranean museum, previously known as the Museum of Westward Expansion, opened in 1976. “Trains” inside the Arch’s two legs transport visitors to the top.
Saarinen’s design is based on a “weighted catenary curve” with larger, heavier sections at the base and smaller, lighter ones at the top. Each section is a double-walled equilateral triangle composed of carbon steel on the inside and stainless steel on the outside, held together by high-strength steel rods that are welded together.
