The Gateway Arch of St. Louis

MA Siraj

If any of you happen to visit St. Louis, the largest city in the state of Missouri in the United States, you should not miss visiting the Gateway Arch. It is the most towering and iconic monument of the city.

It could be seen from all corners of the city and stands on the western bank of the Mississippi river. It is the largest man-made arch around the globe. It was constructed between 1963 and 1965.

 I had the chance to visit and travel inside the gleaming, stainless steel arch way back in 1993 while being on a study trip of the United States. The Arch stands 630 feet tall. It was erected in celebration of westward expansion of the United Sates in the 19th century.

The Arch was designed by Finnish-born American architect Eero Saarinen in 1948. It was to represent a door to the western part of the country. Curiously, the distance between its two legs is equal to its height.

But the most exciting feature of the Gateway Arch is the facility to travel inside the Arch. You may wonder as to how one could travel inside an arch. An elevator can go up inside a skyscraper as it is a simple vertical lift.

But the great Arch has a tram going inside it. The tram has cubicles for visitors’ seat that are joined with chains. As the tram is pulled up, the centre of gravity for the visitors as well as the cubicles keeps changing as it travels inside a curved duct.

The seats constantly get adjusted in sync with the changing centre of gravity and the visitors remain comfortably seated and arrive at the top vertically, not horizontally as one would have anticipated.

The tram has eight cars with each having seats for five. The travel time is just five minutes. The viewing platform on the top provides 16 windows to the east and 16 windows to the west. The windows offer a panoramic view of the entire city of St. Louis and the mighty Mississippi river.

The spacious hall at the top has eateries and juice joints. The Old Courthouse and the Busch Baseball Stadium are two prominent landmarks that could be easily located. In fact, most visitors to the St. Louis would like to frame the Old Courthouse within the Gateway Arch for a souvenir photograph while returning from the city.

At the base of the great Arch is situated the Museum of Westward Expansion which displays how life looked like way back in 1800s and how the new settlers from Europe tackled the challenges of the new lands and states that joined the United States.

Some iconic pictures of the underconstruction Arch too have been displayed. The Gateway Arch is an architectural marvel in itself. It sits inside the Jefferson Memorial National Park and has much to offer to the visitors.