Crews set the last piece, and the Gateway Arch finally closes at 630 feet
For two years, St. Louis had watched two curved steel legs rise from the Mississippi riverfront without touching. On October 28, 1965, a crane lowered the final nine-ton triangular section into the gap at the top, and the two sides met. About 10,000 people gathered along the river to watch the topping-out, completing Eero Saarinen's 630-foot catenary arch after seven years of planning and building. The completed structure stood as the world's tallest arch.
Saarinen built the Arch to mark St. Louis as the literal gateway to westward expansion, and dedicated it to "the American people" rather than any single leader or battle. It gave the country a monument to westward expansion itself, not a war or a man, at a site chosen because St. Louis itself was founded there in 1764.
QHow much did it cost to build the Arch, in today's money?
The Arch cost $13 million to build, which works out to roughly $98.4 million in 2024 dollars. That sum covered everything from the structural steel to the stainless-steel cladding that gives the monument its mirror-bright finish. For a single standalone monument with no practical function beyond observation decks and a museum underneath, it was an unusually expensive undertaking for a monument with no practical function beyond observation decks and a museum.
QWhat does Saarinen's own description of the Arch leave out?
Saarinen described the Arch as symbolizing "the gateway to the West, the national expansion, and whatnot," a notably offhand phrase for an architect discussing his signature work. He never lived to hear the shape called the tallest arch in the world or watch it become shorthand for St. Louis on postcards and license plates. The "and whatnot" suggests a man who saw the form as self-evident and didn't feel the need to oversell it.
QHow tall is the Arch compared to other American landmarks?
At 630 feet, the Gateway Arch is taller than the Washington Monument, which stands just over 555 feet. By some measurements, it is the tallest human-made monument in the Western Hemisphere. Its height of 630 feet is also exactly equal to its width at the base, a widely cited design detail of Saarinen's final structure.
