Gateway Arch National Park

The Arch stands on the site of the original French town of St. Louis, and nothing of that town is left. In the 1930s civic leaders proposed clearing the old riverfront for a memorial to westward expansion. Voters approved a $7.5 million bond issue on September 10, 1935, in an election later shown to have been rigged, and that year a Roosevelt executive order set aside forty city blocks. The clearing, meant to be done by 1942, took 486 buildings, among them Manuel Lisa's Old Rock House of 1818, whose site lies under the north stairs.

Eero Saarinen's design won the 1947-48 competition among 172 entries, but excavation did not begin until February 1961, and the first steel section went up on February 12, 1963. On July 14, 1964, Percy Green and Richard Daly of the Congress of Racial Equality climbed partway up a leg to protest the hiring practices that kept Black contractors off the job, and were arrested after four hours. The last section was set on October 28, 1965. The Arch is 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide at its base, and Dick Bowser's trams, each a string of eight five-seat capsules, still tip and level their way to the top.

The museum under the legs reopened in July 2018 with a new entrance facing the Old Courthouse, the same year Congress renamed Jefferson National Expansion Memorial as Gateway Arch National Park. The museum is free. The tram ride takes forty-five minutes to an hour, involves 96 steps, and sells out on busy days.