Existing comment:
The historic St. Louis riverfront district marked the original eighteenth-century town site, as well as the nineteenth-century commercial area that provided pivotal support for the westward expansion of the United States. By 1930, however, the riverfront had deteriorated into a collection of largely vacant buildings.
Luther Ely Smith and other St. Louis leaders proposed in 1933 to develop a memorial to Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase. They also wished to commemorate the role of St. Louis as a Gateway to the West for the explorers, trappers, soldiers, miners, ranchers, farmers, and developers who contributed to the nation's Westward Expansion. Plans evolved to place the memorial on the historic riverfront.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in December, 1935, designating part of the St. Louis riverfront as Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site within the National Park System. The project became the first National Historic Site established through the recent National Historic Sites Act of 1935 that had granted the President the right to proclaim and acquire historic sites.
The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association in 1947 raised $225,000 for a national architectural competition for the memorial's design. Architect Eero Saarinen won the competition in 1949 with his design of a stainless steel, inverse weighted catenary arch. |