As early as 1935, St. Louis city leaders and urban developers had discussed creating a memorial along the banks of the Mississippi River.

The roots of the Gateway Arch stretch back to the City Beautiful movement of the early 1900’s when Progressive Era politicians and civic organizers strove to improve the aesthetics of St. Louis along with its socioeconomic situation. It wasn’t until the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, however, that the vision of a memorial to America’s past and its future would be designed and built. 

On September 27, 1947, a seven-member jury chose Eero Saarinen’s architectural design for the arch from hundreds of submissions. Due to the complexity of the project, it took over ten years to begin work on the arch. Planners had to organize funding, compose a building schedule, and select construction companies for work. Construction began in 1957 and was completed on October 28, 1965. The Gateway Arch opened to the public on July 24, 1967. Total cost of the project is estimated at $13 million ($86.5 million in today’s dollars).

The Arch represented yet another example of racism in St. Louis.

While many people consider the result of this monumental effort a testament to America’s progress - the Gateway Arch is supposed to celebrate the country’s expansion to the west - others see the arch in a different way. Due to the process by which the land for the arch was acquired, and due to the construction labor process that excluded African Americans from working on the project, the Gateway Arch has a troubled origin story that echoes the city’s racist policies.

In the early 1930’s, city planners were trying to “rid the city’s waterfront of “blighted” property and bring in federal construction dollars (Kaplan, par. 4). Kaplan wrote that

Following a rigged bond measure to cover the city’s costs . . . 40 blocks of riverside property were bulldozed, including 290 businesses, mainly small factories in historic cast-iron buildings employing some 5,000 workers (par. 5).

Interstate highways built after WWII further marginalized “residents - mainly poor and black - from the development around the arch, aggravating racial tensions still fresh from when construction unions barred African-Americans from working on the site. The displacement came to epitomize 20th-century “urban renewal - a euphemism, James Baldwin quipped, for “Negro removal.” (par. 6)

And Campbell concluded that

The Gateway Arch stands today as one of the most iconic structures in the world. As a tourist attraction, it has proven a remarkable success . . . yet as a component of urban renewal, it has a different legacy. The gleaming traveler’s destination is now surrounded by a decaying cityscape suffering from outdated concepts of growth. (p. 169)