Gateway Arch — monument
Image by Erdenebayar from Pixabay

Gateway Arch

  • 2 min read
  • 38.625° N 90.185° W

Interesting facts

  • Before the final keystone could go in, sunlight had expanded the south leg so much that crews sprayed it with water to cool the steel and widen the gap.
  • The 10-ton keystone section was slotted into place in just 13 minutes, with about six inches of clearance remaining.
  • Planners expected around thirteen workers to die during construction, yet the arch was completed without a single fatality.
  • Each leg sits on a concrete foundation 60 feet deep, twenty feet of which is anchored in bedrock.
  • The arch is designed to sway up to 18 inches in either direction and to withstand winds of 150 miles per hour.
  • Its 886 tons of quarter-inch stainless steel cladding was reported as the most ever used on a single project.
  • The structure was assembled from 142 prefabricated triangular sections, each 12 feet long, stacked one on top of another.
  • A time capsule sealed into the keystone holds the signatures of some 762,000 students and other people.
  • The whole monument weighs nearly 43,000 short tons, and more than half of that is concrete.
  • Building the arch cost about 13 million dollars in the money of the 1960s.

Why it is worth it

The Gateway Arch is a single line drawn against the sky: a curve of stainless steel 630 feet (192 m) high and exactly as wide at its base, standing on the west bank of the Mississippi where St. Louis was founded in 1764. It is the tallest arch in the world, and from almost any angle it seems to change thickness and weight, a knife edge seen from the side, a vast gate seen from the front, a mirror of the weather at sunset.

Its shape is not a parabola but a weighted catenary, the curve of a hanging chain turned upside down and made slightly heavier at the feet, so that the forces run down through the legs and straight into the foundations. The architect Eero Saarinen won a nationwide design competition in 1947–48, with structural calculations by Severud Associates. Building the arch itself began on 12 February 1963, the two legs rising in triangular sections of steel until the last piece was fitted at the top on 28 October 1965. Saarinen, who died in 1961, never saw it finished; it opened to the public in 1967.

Getting to the top is part of the experience. Inside each leg runs a small tram, a chain of eight five-seat capsules that rotate like the cars of a Ferris wheel as they climb. At the summit a narrow chamber about 65 feet long has 32 small windows, and on a clear day the view reaches some 30 miles, over the river to Illinois on one side and down onto the Old Courthouse and the grid of downtown on the other. Beside the tracks, each leg also hides an emergency stair of 1,076 steps.

Beneath the arch lies a large underground visitor centre with a museum telling the story of westward expansion, rebuilt and extended in a renovation completed in 2018. The same year the whole memorial, until then known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was renamed Gateway Arch National Park, the smallest national park in the United States.

Getting there

The arch stands on the riverfront of downtown St. Louis, about 1 km from the city centre. St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) is about 21 km away and connected by MetroLink, the light-rail line, in around 28 minutes; get off at 8th & Pine or Laclede's Landing and follow the signs, about a ten-minute walk. The park has no parking of its own, so use city garages. The entrance is on the west side, facing the Old Courthouse and Fourth Street.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Remarkable Monuments in the United States 5The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in the United States 14The Most Remarkable Monuments 56The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173

From the encyclopaedia

The Gateway Arch is a 630-foot-tall (192 m) monument in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a weighted catenary arch, it is the world's tallest arch and Missouri's tallest accessible structure. Some sources consider it the tallest human-made monument in the Western Hemisphere. Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States and officially dedicated to "the American people", the Arch, commonly referred to as "The Gateway to the West", is a National Historic Landmark in Gateway Arch National Park and has become a popular tourist destination, as well as an internationally recognized symbol of St. Louis.

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