36 Fun Facts About Gateway Arch National Park

Gateway Arch National Park lines the bank of which river?

The Mississippi made St. Louis the gateway to the West, so the memorial was placed on its west bank, on the stretch of riverfront where the city itself began.

What distinction does Gateway Arch National Park hold among US national parks?

It is the smallest, so small that in 2017 the Interior Department told Congress the site was too small to be called a national park and asked for 'national monument' instead.

How tall is the Gateway Arch?

630 feet is taller than the design that won the competition: its architect raised the arch as his plans evolved. The gap between its legs at ground level is the same 630 feet.

Which Finnish-American architect designed the Gateway Arch?

Eero Saarinen never saw his arch rise: he won the design competition in 1948 but died in 1961, more than a year before the first section was set in place.

What mix-up occurred when the Gateway Arch's designer was named a 1947 competition finalist?

The telegram went to his father, a celebrated architect who had entered the same contest separately. The family firm toasted the wrong man before the organisers corrected the mistake.

What was Gateway Arch National Park called from 1935 until 2018?

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial honoured the president behind the Louisiana Purchase, but officials argued the name told visitors neither where the park was nor that the arch was its centrepiece.

Which book-series hero fights a Chimera atop the Gateway Arch, then leaps into the river below?

Percy Jackson is cornered by the monster and its mother, Echidna, on the observation deck in The Lightning Thief. He escapes by jumping from the top, a fall only a son of the sea god could survive.

Which president created the memorial that became Gateway Arch National Park, partly to provide Depression-era jobs?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order in December 1935, steering New Deal money to the city to clear dozens of blocks of decaying riverfront, though the arch itself did not rise for three decades.

What later emerged about the 1935 St. Louis bond election that funded the Gateway Arch site?

It was rigged: the measure passed by a suspiciously lopsided margin, fraud was exposed soon afterwards, and the true level of support is unknown. Court challenges failed, so the old riverfront was bought and cleared anyway.

What kind of building was spared when the Gateway Arch grounds were cleared?

A church: the Old Cathedral was judged too historic to demolish, so it still stands beside the arch while the dozens of blocks of warehouses and shops around it were levelled.

How were the Gateway Arch's upper sections hoisted into place?

By cranes that climbed the legs: each creeper derrick rode a track bolted to the arch itself, crawling higher as it stacked the sections. Afterwards they crept back down, and the track holes were filled and polished.

How did workers get the Gateway Arch's final section to fit?

They hosed one leg with water because the morning sun was expanding the metal and closing the gap at the top. City firefighters kept the spray going while the last piece was eased in, half an hour ahead of schedule.

What was welded inside the Gateway Arch's final section before it was set in place?

A time capsule holding sheets of signatures, many gathered in local schools, went up with the last piece. Because it is welded into the structure, it cannot be removed for as long as the arch stands.

What holds the Gateway Arch up?

Its metal skin carries the load: the arch has no internal frame at all, only an inner and an outer wall working together, which left the hollow middle free for the trams.

How many construction workers died building the Gateway Arch?

Zero: insurers had predicted 13 deaths on a job that sent welders and riggers hundreds of feet into the air, yet not a single worker was killed building the arch.

What shape is the cross-section of each leg of the Gateway Arch?

An equilateral triangle: the arch went up as a stack of hollow three-sided sections, each a little narrower than the one below, which is why the legs look so slim by the time they meet at the top.

The Gateway Arch's tram to the top has been described as half elevator and half what?

Half elevator, half Ferris wheel: the tram is a train of small capsules that pivot like fairground cars as they climb the curved legs, so riders stay upright all the way to the top.

Which stunt have pilots pulled at the Gateway Arch?

Flying through its legs was banned by federal aviation officials before the arch was even finished, yet the first plane slipped through in June 1966 and others have followed since.

Who may climb the stairs inside the Gateway Arch?

Staff and rescuers only: the 1,076 steps in each leg exist for maintenance and emergencies, so every visitor who reaches the top gets there by tram.

When federal money ran short, who paid to build the tram inside the Gateway Arch?

A regional transport agency, Bi-State Development, sold bonds to build the tram when the Park Service could not afford one, then repaid them out of fares that started at a dollar a ride.

How did activists Percy Green and Richard Daly protest hiring bias at the Gateway Arch in 1964?

They climbed one unfinished leg by a work ladder at lunchtime and stayed for four hours, protesting that Black workers were shut out of skilled jobs on a federally funded monument. Both were arrested when they came down.

Who dedicated the Gateway Arch in 1968?

Hubert Humphrey, then vice president, spoke indoors: rain washed out the outdoor programme, so the ceremony moved inside the visitor centre.

How did skydiver Kenneth Swyers die at the Gateway Arch in 1980?

He landed on top, then fell: Swyers, 33, parachuted onto the peak of the arch one November morning but plunged to his death before his second parachute could save him.

The Old Courthouse in Gateway Arch National Park hosted the first trials of which landmark case?

Dred Scott's freedom suit was filed here in 1846 with his wife, Harriet, and tried twice in the building. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled against the couple, holding that they were not citizens and so could not sue at all.

Which suffragist's lawsuit over being refused a vote in 1872 began at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis?

Virginia Minor sued registrar Reese Happersett for refusing to register her in 1872; the case began in the Old Courthouse, and in 1875 the Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett that the Constitution conferred no right to vote.

What material frames the Civil War-era dome of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis?

Cast iron and wrought iron form a lightweight skeleton that its designer, William Rumbold, patented. The new dome replaced a smaller one during the Civil War and made the courthouse the tallest building in the state for three decades.

The Civil Courts Building, west of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, is crowned with a replica of what?

The Mausoleum of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was the model for the columns and stepped pyramid on top. In place of the original's chariot, the 1930 building has two sphinx-like figures.

Which fort, a hastily built stone tower, held off the British-led attack on Spanish-ruled St. Louis in 1780?

Fort San Carlos was a lone stone tower that the Spanish lieutenant-governor, Fernando de Leyba, had thrown up weeks before the attack. His outnumbered defenders held it, though villagers caught in the fields outside were killed or captured.

For decades, what cut the Gateway Arch grounds off from downtown St. Louis?

A sunken interstate ran between the arch and the Old Courthouse until a landscaped lid, the Park over the Highway, was built across it. The lid was the first piece of a $380 million renovation of the grounds.

The Eads Bridge just north of the arch grounds, finished in 1874, pioneered the large-scale use of what?

The Eads Bridge was the first large bridge built with structural steel, in chrome-steel tubular arches; its caissons sank foundations over 100 feet down, and its 520-foot centre span was the world's longest rigid span at the time.

How did the Gateway Arch's architect die in 1961, before it was built?

The architect died of a brain tumour in Ann Arbor, Michigan, aged 51, some 17 months before the first section of his arch was set in place. His partners saw the project through to completion.

Which publisher bought a bankrupt newspaper auctioned on the steps of St. Louis's Old Courthouse in 1878?

Joseph Pulitzer bought the bankrupt St. Louis Dispatch there, and three days later his merged paper, soon called the Post-Dispatch, put out its first issue.

Dan Kiley, who landscaped the Gateway Arch grounds, earlier designed the courtroom for which war crimes trials?

Nuremberg's courtroom fell to Kiley because he ran design for the wartime Office of Strategic Services. Two years later he joined the team that won the 1947 competition to design the St. Louis memorial.

Where is the Gateway Arch's visitor centre?

Underground, between its legs: early plans for museums on the surface were scrapped in favour of one buried beneath the monument. The centre opened in June 1967, and the tram to the top carried its first passengers that July.

St. Louis, founded in 1764 where the Gateway Arch now stands, grew up around the trade in what?

Furs brought the French merchant Pierre Laclède here in 1764 to set up a trading post. Dealing with the Osage nation then built the town's first fortunes.

The Gateway Arch's curve is the shape of what, turned upside down?

A hanging chain sags into a curve called a catenary, and the arch is a weighted version of it flipped over. The shape sends the monument's weight straight down its legs into the foundations instead of pushing them apart.