Construction started on the Gateway Arch in February 1963, with work completed in 1965, but the idea was conceived much earlier than that. In 1933, St. Louis lawyer Luther Ely Smith pitched his plan for a park along the Mississippi River for St. Louis, in part to honor the westward movement but also to create jobs during the Depression and beautify the city. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1935 to form the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. In 1947, Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen won a contest to design the symbol of the park, the Arch. Saarinen died in 1961 and never saw the finished work.
The Gateway Arch is made of stainless steel; it stands 630 feet tall and weighs 17,246 tons. At ground level, it is also 630 feet wide. According to the National Park Service, the Gateway Arch is the park system's tallest monument at 630 feet, standing higher than the 555-foot Washington Monument and dwarfing the 305-foot Statue of Liberty. It is less than half as tall as the highest building in the United States, which is the 1,451-foot Willis Tower, formerly called the Sears Tower, in Chicago.
For a fee, visitors can ride a tram to the top of the Gateway Arch and take in a view of up to 30 miles away in clear skies. To the west, visitors will see downtown St. Louis; to the east, the view is of the Mississippi River and Illinois. It is open year-round, except major holidays. The Arch is accessible by public transportation; Interstates 44, 55, 64 and 70 meet right near the Memorial.
The Arch is just one attraction at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. The memorial houses the Old Courthouse, where two of the trials in the famed Dred Scott slavery case were held in the mid-1800s. Also there is the Museum of Westward Expansion, which shares the history of those who moved west in the 19th century, including Lewis and Clark.
