Gateway to the West: Eero Saarinen and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

The Gateway Arch is the symbolic gateway to the West and the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri.Structured Vision/Shutterstock

The Gateway Arch majestically dominates the skyline of St. Louis, Missouri, and has come to symbolize the great city in the heartland of America. Reflecting St. Louis’s role in the nation’s westward expansion, the monument was constructed to memorialize the few hearty souls that set out to explore a new frontier. Thomas Jefferson sent his close confidantes Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on an epic excursion from the cultivated hills of Virginia to the country’s newly purchased and unchartered Louisiana territory. In the early 19th century, the shores of the Mississippi represented no less than the beginnings of a journey to “the ends of the earth.”

Architect of the Arch

Architect Eero Saarinen, circa 1955. Library of Congress. Public Domain

Eero Saarinen was born in Hvittrask, Finland on Aug. 20, 1910. He was the son of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. His father had collaborated in the design of the Finnish Pavilion for the 1900 Paris Exposition and developed a strong specialty in urban planning. His style was a blend of Finnish traditional architecture, romanticism, and art nouveau.

In 1921, the Chicago Tribune held a competition for the design of a new skyscraper to house their offices. Eliel Saarinen, who had never designed a skyscraper before, submitted a design for a 29-story tower. It came in second, and Saarinen was paid $20,000 for the concept, although it was never built. The most authentic realization of the Tribune Tower was the 1929 Gulf Building in Houston, Texas.

Eliel brought his family to the United States when Eero was 13, settling in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Eero’s father was invited to design the campus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and later taught there.

Eero studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France, and would eventually attend Yale Architecture School. After he graduated, Eero went to work with his father. Eero not only collaborated with his father, but also worked with industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames creating furniture.

Commemorating America’s Westward Expansion

"Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia," 1905, Charles M. Russell. Opaque and transparent watercolor over graphite underdrawing on paper, 18 3/4 inches by 23 7/8 inches. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas. Public Domain

In 1933, St. Louis, Missouri lawyer and civic booster Luther Ely Smith had a vision for a great memorial to commemorate the western expansion of the United States. This had begun when President Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in 1803. The Louisiana Purchase extended the country from the Mississippi River to the Continental Divide in Montana, Colorado, and the western regions of the present-day United States.

Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on an 8,000-mile journey to explore the new American frontier. They had begun their trip at St. Louis, which was then a modest trading post. Upon their return, St. Louis soon became the bustling new “Gateway to the West.”

Smith’s project was to be the centerpiece of a redeveloped St. Louis waterfront. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association was formed with Smith as its chairman. Their mission was to raise funds and make the memorial a reality.

In 1945, the JNEMA held a competition for the design of their memorial. Eliel and young Eero both entered designs independently, though Eero was still working for his father at that time. One day, a telegram envelope arrived at the firm from the committee in charge of the competition. It was addressed to E. Saarinen. The letter mistakenly identified the father (and principle of the firm) as the creator of the winning entry. The winning design, however, was clearly that of Eero. It was a simple but elegant arch, rising from a gracefully landscaped plaza. The arch would be the only architectural element visible, for the museum and support buildings would be buried underground. Clad in highly reflective stainless steel, the arch would symbolize the gateway to the west and would be situated to capture the reflection of both sunrise and sunset.

A Steel Catenary Arch

Architectural drawing of a a section of the Gateway Arch by Eero Saarinen. Library of Congress. Public Domain

Although the design is modern, the engineering was revolutionary. Eero drew his inspiration from sketches of Roman and Gothic arches—even sketching out a drawing of Constantine’s Arch—before sculpting the form into a catenary curve. That is the form a chain takes when freely suspended from two points. It is reflected upward in his design to form a symbolic portal from east to west. A photograph from the era shows Eero’s design methodology. He created the arch as a gigantic sculpture and created models of varying sizes to study it visually, just as he would to create any monumental sculpture. On the walls behind the model hang the study sketches, which clearly reference the historical precedents.

Gateway Arch model with Eero Saarinen, 1947 to 1965. Library of Congress. Public Domain

Just as James Buchanan Eads had pushed the limits of steel arch construction in 1867 to build a bridge over the Mississippi River connecting St. Louis in Missouri and East St. Louis in Illinois, Eero would push them even farther to build an arch 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide (the catenary shape creates the illusion that it is taller than it is wide). He would build it of 142 sections of varying dimensions, all double-walled equilateral triangles. The outer wall would consist of 886 tons of stainless steel. The inner wall would be made of 2,157 tons of carbon steel plate. Together with interior steel members, stairs, and the system to take visitors to the top, the total weight of the arch, supported by the double steel wall, would be 5,199 tons. The design had to be tested in a wind tunnel, again requiring models. With wind speed of 150 mph the arch would experience an 18-inch deflection. Construction would not begin until Feb. 12, 1963. Unfortunately, Eero would not live to see it being built; he died in 1961.

Rising to the Top

Close-up view of the Gateway Arch. Library of Congress. Public Domain

The arch was designed to have an observation deck at the top, much like the Washington Monument, but a standard elevator would not work in the curved arch. Eero and his colleagues called the Montgomery Elevator Company in Moline, Illinois.

Dick Bowser was a college dropout whose family was also in the elevator business. A friend of Bowser introduced him to Eero, who discovered the young man was actually a mechanical genius. He asked Bowser to design a passenger system for the arch, needing it in two weeks’ time. Bowser came back with a brilliant solution that was part elevator and part Ferris wheel. Little self-leveling cars riding in a circular track would propel themselves up the ever-changing angle of the arch leg, arriving at the top where passengers could disembark and enjoy the view. A tramway rode up inside each leg of the arch. There was also a stairway and a lift that went up at an angle for maintenance use only. Bowser’s tram cars are still in use today.

One Last Brilliant Idea

A pair of special cranes had to be designed that rode up the stacked segments on a track. There was a spacer truss placed between the legs as they rose so that the whole structure would be supported as it angled toward the top. Accuracy in the placement of the segments was critical. If they were off by as little as 1/64th of an inch, the final segment would not join to both legs at the top. Engineers knew the metal of the arch expanded when the sun hit it and contracted when it was cold, so they planned to set the last segment—the keystone—at night by floodlights. The city fathers would have none of that. They wanted an afternoon “completion ceremony” with dignitaries in attendance.

The builders of the arch came up with a wonderful low-tech solution. As the city fire department hosed down the sunlit faces of the legs, cooling them to match the temperature of the surfaces in shade, the last steel “keystone” segment was placed at the top, joining the two sides of the arch.

The Gateway Arch, as it would come to be called, was completed on Oct. 28, 1965. It was officially dedicated on May 25, 1968 by Vice President Hubert Humphrey who called the arch “a soaring curve in the sky that links the rich heritage of yesterday with the richer future of tomorrow.”

Design drawing for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Competition showing crowd watching fireworks near the Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri. Library of Congress. Public Domain