The Gateway Arch

Tracy Campbell, Mark Crispin Miller

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780300205688
• eBook ISBN: 9780300169881
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Architecture General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This "fascinating, engaging" history of St. Louis's monument to American expansion reveals a story of greed, discrimination, and community displacement (NextSTL.com).
 
Rising to a triumphant height of 630 feet, the Gateway Arch is one of the world's most widely recognized structures and attracts millions of tourists to St. Louis every year. Envisioned in 1947 but not completed until the mid-1960s, its story is one of innovation and greed; civic pride and backroom deals. Weaving together social, political, and cultural perspectives, historian Tracy Campbell uncovers the complicated and troubling history of this iconic symbol.
 
In this revealing account, Campbell shows that the so-called Gateway to the West was the scheme of shrewd city leaders who were willing to steal an election, destroy historic buildings, and drive out communities in order to make downtown St. Louis more profitable. Campbell also tells the human story of the architect Eero Saarinen, whose prize-winning design brought him acclaim but also charges of plagiarism, and who didn't live to see the completion of his vision.

Notes

The following abbreviations are used in the notes.

AAA	Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
ACP	Alfonso Cervantes Papers, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University in St. Louis
AESP	Aline and Eero Saarinen Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
AF	Architectural Forum
BFDP	Bernard F. Dickmann Papers, The State Historical Society of Missouri, University of Missouri–Columbia
CA	Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Academy, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
CCP	Clarence Cannon Papers, The State Historical Society of Missouri, University of Missouri–Columbia
CGP	Clifford Greve Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.
CREC	Charles and Ray Eames Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
ES	Eero Saarinen.
ESP	Eero Saarinen Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut.
FLWP	Frank Lloyd Wright Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
HAP	Harris Armstrong Papers, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries, St. Louis.
HBAP	Harland Bartholomew and Associates Papers, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries, St. Louis.
IPSR	Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California-Berkeley.
JKDP	James K. Douglas Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.
JNEMA	Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives, National Park Service, St. Louis.
LES	Luther Ely Smith
LESP	Luther Ely Smith Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.
LSSP	Lilian Swann Saarinen Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
NPSCCF	National Park Service Central Classified Files, 1933–1949, Record Group 79, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
NYT	New York Times
POPC	Paul O. Porter Collection, Special Collections, Andrews Library, College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio.
RTPP	Raymond R. Tucker Personal Papers, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries, St. Louis.
SLGD	St. Louis Globe-Democrat
SLPD	St. Louis Post-Dispatch
SSP	Stuart Symington Papers, The State Historical Society of Missouri, University of Missouri–Columbia.

Introduction

1. Philip Ball, Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 279–80; William Anderson, The Rise of the Gothic (London: Hutchinson, 1985), 41–45.

2. David Harvey, “Monument and Myth,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 69 (September 1979): 381.

ONE
The New York of the West

1. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 2–4; Timothy R. Pauketat, Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi (New York: Viking, 2009), 22–35, 101–2; Biloine Whiting Young and Melvin L. Fowler, Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 2–3, 307, 310; William R. Iseminger, “Culture and Environment in the American Bottom: The Rise and Fall of Cahokia Mounds,” in Andrew Hurley, ed., Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1997): 38–57; Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 5–9.

2. Jay Gitlin, The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 14; James Neal Primm, Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764–1980 (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1998), 2–13; William E. Foley, A History of Missouri vol. I, 1673–1820 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), 23–25; Shirley Christian, Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America’s Frontier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 3–17; John A. Bryan, “ The Changing Scene on the St. Louis Riverfront, 1764–1954,” report no. 295, box 8, JNEMA, 1; Aron, American Confluence, 50–54.

3. Bryan, “The Changing Scene,” 9–12; Pauketat, Cahokia, 27; Gitlin, Bourgeois Frontier, 84–86; Aron, American Confluence, 106–8; Adam Arenson, The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 6–13.

4. Jay Feldman, When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes (New York: Free Press, 2005), 15, 172–76; James A. Taylor, “Earthquake Ground Motion and Soil Amplification Effects in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area,” M.S. thesis, Washington University in St. Louis, 1997, 14–16. Many seismologists consider St. Louis to be in a secondary area of potential damage from a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault.

5. Aron, American Confluence, 186–87.

6. Scott v. Sandford 60 U.S. 393 (1857); James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 170–73.

7. Joel A. Tarr and Carl Zimring, “The Struggle for Smoke Control in St. Louis,” in Andrew Hurley, ed., Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1997), 199–204.

8. Bryan, “The Changing Scene,” 39–40; Arenson, The Great Heart of the Republic, 9–12, 21.

9. Bryan, “The Changing Scene,” 39–58; Rob Wilson, “Cholera and Quarantine: St. Louis’ Battle With the 1849 Epidemic,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Western History Association, St. Louis, October 2006; Primm, Lion of the Valley, 154–58; SLPD, July 18, 2010.

10. Daily Evening News, March 30, 1855; New York Journal of Commerce, September 14, 1856; J. A. Dacus and James W. Buel, “A Tour of St. Louis, or, the Inside Life of a Great City” (St. Louis: Western Publishing, 1878), 29.

11. Arenson, The Great Heart of the Republic, 120–22.

12. Bryan, “The Changing Scene,” 61–68; Primm, Lion of the Valley, 235–53, 286–87; Maury Klein and Harvey A. Kantor, Prisoners of Progress: American Industrial Cities, 1850–1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 152–53.

13. Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 22–23, 35; Don Phares, “Planning for Regional Governance in the St. Louis Area: The Context, the Plans, the Outcomes,” in Mark Tranel, ed., St. Louis Plans: The Ideal, and the Real St. Louis (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2007), 55–62.

14. Bryan, “The Changing Scene,” 68–72; Primm, Lion of the Valley, 373.

15. Merrill D. Peterson, The Jeffe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Saarinen’s Cathedral
• ONE The New York of the West
• TWO Getting Things Done
• THREE The St. Louis Municipal Parking Lot
• FOUR A Peculiarly Happy Form
• FIVE The Architect
• SIX The Laughingstock of the World
• SEVEN “Got It Made”
• EIGHT Expendable Culture
• NINE Symbol and Symptom
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index