Gateway Arch
The history
Eero Saarinen's 630-foot stainless steel catenary, designed in 1947, built 1963–65 — the tallest monument in the United States and the memorial to Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and the westward expansion it opened. You get to the top in a tram nobody else has ever built: Dick Bowser drew it in two weeks in 1960, a chain of eight five-seat barrels that rotate to stay level as the leg curves, 1,076 steps' worth of climb in four minutes. The observation deck is a curved slot of thirty-two windows, sixteen a side, seven inches by twenty-seven — enough to see thirty miles into Illinois and straight down onto the Old Courthouse dome. The Arch sways up to eighteen inches in a high wind; the day I went up it was doing nothing at all.
In brief
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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