We use a lot of arches in our world. I’m not sure which might be the most famous arch. Could it be the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France? Or perhaps it is the Golden Arches of McDonalds?
Maybe none of these.
It just might be the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.
The monument has been around for quite some time now. It was completed on this date, October 28, 1965.
I’ve seen all of the arches I’ve mentioned. Some of them more than others. But the Gateway Arch is perhaps the most impressive in terms of physical space. It is 630 feet tall, for one thing. Compare that to the Arc de Triomphe at 164 feet in height. Or those Golden Arches, most of them standing at about 25 feet.
But back to St. Louis. That huge arch was designed by Finnish-born American architect Eero Saarinen. The structure was built to commemorate St. Louis’s historic role as “Gateway to the West.”
Eero Saarinen won the right to its design through a 1947 national architectural competition for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Saarinen had much in mind for this monument. He set out to create a plan that would honor Thomas Jefferson while making a structure “which would have lasting significance and would be a landmark of our time.”
Sadly, Eero never saw his monumental vision truly come to life. He died during surgery for a brain tumor in 1961 at the age of 51.
The Arch was completed four years later, on October 28, 1965.
But most would agree. There’s hardly a more recognizable landmark in the Midwest than St. Louis’s towering Gateway Arch. It’s the tallest monument in the United States and the tallest arch in the world.
I know I’ve gone on about the height. But there is this, too. The arch is as tall as it is wide.
It might not look like it — 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide. Since you’re not always looking at the arch straight on, you experience an illusion that it’s much taller than it is wide.
The arch was quite an engineering feat. Many people didn’t think it would stand. But Eero was sure of it. So were all the other architects and engineers who mapped out the logistics of this thing. But it stood when the last brick was laid. I’m not sure it has bricks, but you know what I mean.
But the amazing thing is this. The arch’s two legs were built separately. One here. One there. And. If their measurements were off by as little as 1/64th of an inch, they would not have been able to join at the top. The stainless-steel pieces of the arch were shipped in via train from Pennsylvania and had to be assembled on-site.
Welders had to work extraordinarily carefully to ensure their measurements were precise—the margin of error allowed was less than half a millimeter. Many people speculated that the arch would fail when the last piece at the top of the arch was set in place to join the legs. It didn’t, of course.
Here’s another massive thing. The insurance company for the project predicted that 13 workers would die during construction. It seemed inevitable. I mean, people were working hundreds of feet in the air with no safety nets. Of course there would be accidents.
But somehow, no one died during construction.
The only death associated with the Gateway Arch was that of Kenneth Swyers. In 1980, this crazy man leaped from a plane, parachuted to the top of the arch, and attempted to BASE-jump to the ground. His auxiliary parachute didn’t deploy, and he fell to his death.
And speaking of deaths, our U.S. Presidents aren’t allowed to go to the top. The only exception was President Eisenhower.
The Secret Service has forbidden all presidents from ascending the Gateway Arch due to security concerns. That good arch is, after all, a very tight, enclosed space. But Dwight D. Eisenhower went up.
The great Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
An amazingly big gate. With no fence.
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“By dint of building well, you get to be a good architect”
– Aristotle
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“As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past for a future which is essentially unknown”
– Norman Foster
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“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”
– Winston Churchill
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Big Gateway. Big Arch.
