Existing comment:
The Idea:
St. Louis lawyer Luther Ely Smith, appalled at the dilapidated St. Louis riverfront district, decided that a memorial to the westward expansion of the United States should be built here. St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann liked Smith's idea and was able to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim Jefferson national Expansion Memorial on December 21, 1935. Between 1939 and 1942, all the buildings in a 40 block area were torn down for the memorial. World War II brought the project to a halt, but in 1947-48 an architectural competition was held. A total of 172 entries were evaluated by a jury of seven architects who chose a beautiful stainless steel arch designed by Eero Saarinen.
Although Luther Ely Smith died in 1951, the campaign to build the memorial continued. Congresswoman Leonor K. Sullivan obtained much of the necessary funding from Congress. By 1957, Eero Saarinen began redesigning the Arch project. Backed by memorial Superintendent George Hartzog, Saarinen placed surface structures in an underground complex. Meanwhile, Mayor Raymond Tucker, a trained engineer, settled a dispute with the railroads over an unsightly riverfront trestle. Using Tucker's tunnel design, the great Arch was finally read to rise from the river. |