The Gateway Arch, completed in 1965, stands 192 metres tall, the tallest arch and tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen to commemorate St. Louis’s historic role as the primary departure point for American westward expansion during the 19th century, its stainless steel curve engineered using a mathematical catenary shape that distributes weight with remarkable structural efficiency for a monument of its scale.
That expansion narrative, while historically significant, has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent decades, the arch’s celebration of westward settlement inevitably intersects with the displacement of Indigenous nations across the same territory, a tension the surrounding Gateway Arch National Park’s modern museum exhibits have worked to more directly and honestly address rather than simply celebrate uncritically.
A Monument Built on Top of a Demolished Neighbourhood
Constructing the arch and its surrounding riverfront park required demolishing a substantial historic district along the Mississippi riverfront in the 1930s and 40s, displacing existing residents and businesses well before construction on the monument itself even began, a piece of urban renewal history less frequently discussed than the arch’s own celebrated engineering achievement. The arch’s tram system, a genuinely unusual capsule-based lift design, carries visitors up through the curved structure’s interior to an observation deck offering views across both St. Louis and the Mississippi River into Illinois beyond.
Saarinen died in 1961, four years before the arch’s completion, and never saw his design fully realised, a fate he shared with several other architects across this list whose most significant works were finished only after their deaths.
Painting a Steel Curve Against the Mississippi
The Gateway Arch’s gleaming steel curve against the Mississippi River gives a watercolourist bold, minimalist geometry and reflected light to work with. We’ve captured that scale in our own Gateway Arch Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Missouri for a wall at home.
Built to celebrate a chapter of expansion whose full costs are only now being more honestly told, the Gateway Arch remains a monument whose meaning has continued evolving well past its own construction.