The Gateway Arch, or Gateway to the West, is an arch that is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri. It was built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States. At 630 feet (192 m), it is the tallest man-made monument in the United States, Missouri's tallest accessible building, and the largest architectural structure designed as a weighted or flattened catenary arch.
The arch is located at the site of St. Louis' foundation, on the west bank of the Mississippi River where Pierre Laclède, just after noon on February 14, 1764, told his aide, Auguste Chouteau, to build a city.
The Gateway Arch was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and German-American structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel in 1947. Construction began on February 12, 1963, and ended on October 28, 1965, costing US$13 million at the time (approximately $95,900,000 in 2012). The monument opened to the public on June 10, 1967.
Read more about Gateway Arch: Construction, Public Access, Symbolism and Culture, Maintenance
Famous quotes containing the words gateway and/or arch:
“Antithesis is the narrow gateway through which error most prefers to worm its way towards truth.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Prayer is the fair and radiant daughter of all the human virtues, the arch connecting heaven and earth, the sweet companion that is alike the lion and the dove; and prayer will give you the key of heaven. As pure and as bold as innocence, as strong as all things are that are entire and single, this fair and invincible queen rests on the material world; she has taken possession of it; for, like the sun, she casts about it a sphere of light.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)