Bonus History Lesson of the Day: On this date in 1965, the Gateway Arch, along the River waterfront, in St. Louis, MO was completed.The Gateway Arch, or “Gateway to the West,” is the principal component of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, an extraordinary monument built on the west bank of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri, “the oldest European city in the Midwest.” The Gateway Arch is the tallest man-made monument in the United States (630 feet, or 192 meters) and the second tallest freestanding monument in the world after the Eiffel Tower. The “father” of the Memorial is St. Louis attorney and civic leader Luther Ely Smith (1873–1951) who in the 1920s had been appointed by his Amherst schoolmate, Calvin Coolidge, to build the George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Indiana. Ten years later, the U.S. government desired to build a memorial to Thomas Jefferson, which finally materialized as the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.—even so, Smith later said that while returning by train to St. Louis from a meeting concerning the Clark memorial, he looked out at St. Louis and happened upon the idea that the Jefferson memorial should be placed on historic property in St. Louis where the expansion to the west started, an area that had now, ironically, become a drab waterfront. Essentially, Smith had been so inspired by what Vincennes, Indiana had done in its tribute to George Rogers Clark of Revolutionary War fame, that he decided to try the same thing in St. Louis. Smith approached St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann with the idea. Both men then pitched the idea again to civic leaders. Smith was appointed to chair a committee to explore the idea in greater detail the idea of renovating the waterfront area in St. Louis by turning it into a park and establishing a national expansion memorial. This committee became the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association and was formally chartered in April 1934. Luther Ely Smith served as its chairman until 1949 following selection of the Memorial’s final design. The Gateway Arch was expected to open to the public in 1964, but the projected completion date was regularly postponed. Ironically, Arch watchers were caught by surprise the morning of Thursday, October 28, 1965, when the Arch finally was to be “topped out.” The insertion of the last section was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., and in preparation for this event a hydraulic jack had placed 450 tons of pressure needed to jack the legs an additional four feet apart in order to position the final piece into an 8.5-foot gap (thus allowing for three inches of clearance on each side of the last section before the pressure was reduced and everything came together). Work started earlier, however, because the sun that day had expanded the south leg by five inches (13 cm). Fire hoses were employed to pour thousands of gallons of cold water on the south leg and make it shrink to match the length of the north leg. Normally at the top an arch there sits a single keystone, also called a headstone quoin. In the case of the Gateway Arch, the last section at the apex is not a keystone. Instead, it is simply the final section of the north leg, because the Gateway Arch has no keystone—there is an even number of sections in both legs (a total of 142 sections), with a welded joint in the center at the Arch’s apex. This last section of the Arch’s north leg weighs 10 tons. A time capsule holding 762,000 signatures of St. Louis area students was welded into this final section, and then the section was blessed by both a priest and a rabbi before being raised into place. Several thousand persons watched the Arch’s completion from the surrounding area that compfrises the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and several hundred more gathered on the Illinois shore of the Mississippi at East St. Louis. Many small aircraft and helicopters (most carrying photographers) circled the arch as the final section was lifted into place. In one such helicopter hovering above the Mississippi, Vice President Hubert Humphrey patiently watched the proceedings. At 9:25 a.m. the 142nd section was lifted from the ground by one of the two creeper cranes perched on the Arch’s legs. The section reached the top of the 630-foot tall structure by 9:40 a.m. Twenty minutes later, the section had been maneuvered into position and workers began to ease the pie wedge shaped section into place. By Noon the section was positioned, and by early evening the jacks had been released, allowing the legs to come together to hold the final section in place. The dream of visionary architect Eero Saarinen was at last realized. Also present at the completion of the Arch was Aline Saarinen of New York, widow of the Arch’s architect, Eero Saarinen. Police later reported that jewels and other items valued at $1,185 had been stolen the previous night from her motel room. Undersecretary of the Interior John A. Carver Jr. said during a ceremony celebrating the completion of the arch that the structure is “not just an engineering marvel, or an architectural great...(but) reflects the impulse of the age it memorializes—westward expansion as ‘our manifest destiny.’ “The grace of this catenary symbol—which lifts our eyes in a pleasing way, responsive to the genius of [Eero] Saarinen—evidences our commitment to this ideal. So does the harmony of the arch with the city and the unity of the site with its surroundings. I think it does meet the challenge—it fulfills man’s belief in the nobility of his existence.” After the last wedge slipped into place, the brace positioning and the two legs of the Arch was removed and derricks crawled back down; the tracks were removed from above them and the track bolt holes in the outer surface of the Arch were filled in with perfectly-fitting, nearly invisible stainless steel plugs. The whole surface was then polished to a glistening, reflective shine. The completed structure weighs 42,878 short tons (38,898 tons), of which concrete comprises 25,980 short tons (23,570 tons); structural steel interior, 2,157 short tons (1,957 tons); and the stainless steel panels that cover the exterior of the arch, 886 short tons (804 tons).
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 15:58:11 +0000
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