St. Louis’ Gateway Arch Beat Out 172 Other Monument Designs

The Gateway Arch has graced the St. Louis riverfront since October 28, 1965—long enough that locals and visitors might struggle to picture the city skyline without the striking silver monument. But back in the late 1940s, plans for the architectural marvel went head-to-head with more than 150 other designs to win out as the cornerstone of the future Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

The monument along the banks of the Mississippi River was established in the 1930s to honor Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase and the pioneers who expanded the United States westward, but its development took time. In 1947, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association launched a national design competition for the site. It marked the first major design competition following World War II and offered the sizable first prize of $40,000, drawing some of architecture’s biggest names. Furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames, modernist Walter Gropius and Minoru Yamasaki, the future designer of the World Trade Center, all threw their hats in the ring.

Names mattered little, however, as the judges reviewed 172 conceptual drawings marked only with entry numbers to keep the focus on the merits of the individual plans, not the people who submitted them. After naming five semifinalists in September 1947, the jury selected the winning design—a soaring stainless steel arch designed by a relatively unknown architect—in February 1948. Had the jury selected any of these following entries over the Gateway Arch, however, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial would look considerably different today.

St. Louis native Harris Armstrong submitted the only design to garner votes from all seven judges in the first round of voting. Armstrong’s original plan included educational buildings for a “graduate school for the study of and inducement toward public service,” known as the Thomas Jefferson Institute of Democratic Government. Accompanying that were museums, six tall housing blocks, an orchestra shell, a circular heliport and an airport for small planes on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.

The centerpiece of Armstrong’s plan was a pair of sharp cuts into the river’s levee in the symbolic shape of a plow. “The basic idea of the project is a dynamic sculptural use of the levee itself,” he stated on the plan. Although the judges were enthusiastic about Armstrong’s design, they noted in naming it a semifinalist that the symbolic concept would only be visible from the air, not the ground, and would be too expensive to implement.

Faced with the need to drastically overhaul his design, Armstrong returned with an uninspired follow-up. Gone was the plow-shaped concrete inlet, replaced by groves of trees, a reflecting pool and a central monument that Architectural Forum called a “slab” that “looks more like an office building than a tribute to the Pioneer Spirit.” After having the highest-rated design in the first round, Armstrong ended up garnering only an honorable mention and $2,500.

One of America’s foremost architects of the 20th century, Louis Kahn submitted a plan that looked more like a college campus than a national monument. That makes sense given that he envisioned “a laboratory of education” as a living memorial.

At its core was a tower with classrooms, laboratories, libraries and even a television broadcasting studio to disseminate the institute’s research around the world. Surrounding the tower were dormitories and a museum interpreting the significance of westward expansion and highlighting achievements in the arts and sciences. On the east bank of the Mississippi River, Kahn envisioned playing fields, tennis courts, an arena and a stadium.

Kahn’s submission was doomed, however, by his inclusion of a pedestrian promenade with a restaurant, shops, dance hall, movie theater and even a Ferris wheel that connected the two riverbanks. The selection committee prohibited designs that called for bridges across the Mississippi River.

Coming up just short was the second-place design submitted by a trio of University of Illinois graduate students: Gordon Phillips, William Eng and George Foster. Their plan called for a series of seven pylons commemorating key historical moments in the settlement of the West along with a mass sculpture depicting the expedition of Lewis and Clark on the south end. The north end of their proposed park featured a serpentine museum structure. Although the architecture students didn’t capture the top prize, they still received a $20,000 runner-up award.

Famed Finnish-born architect Eliel Saarinen, who settled in the United States in 1923 and ran an architecture firm with his son, submitted a plan featuring a redesigned harbor and circular domed structures to house a planetarium, auditorium, studio and theater. The centerpiece of the design was a massive rectangular stone gate with four prongs in front of which were statues of Jefferson along with those of Robert Livingston and James Monroe, who both helped to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase with France.

After the jury chose the five semifinalists, Saarinen received a telegram congratulating him on making the cut. Champagne corks popped at the offices of Saarinen and Saarinen & Associates as toasts were raised to the patriarch. It turned out, however, that the telegram had been sent by mistake.

The telegram delivered to Eliel Saarinen was actually intended for his son, Eero Saarinen. The mistake was perhaps understandable since the two men shared the same last name, first initial and workplace—not to mention that they were even both born on August 20. The jury, which quickly corrected the mistake once it realized what had happened, was drawn to the younger Saarinen’s proposal for a simple yet monumental arch that captured the idea of St. Louis as a gateway to the West.

After experimenting with different forms using pipe cleaners he planted in his living room rug, Eero initially submitted a design for a 590-foot concrete arch covered in a skin of stainless steel to give it a more modern look. In his revised, final plan, Eero increased the height of the arch to 630 feet and altered the shape of its sections from four-sided trapezoids to equilateral triangles, creating a sleeker design.

When the jury met to make its final choice, the Gateway Arch was the consensus winner on the ballots of all seven judges. Financing and site issues delayed construction by more than a decade. Before the project was completed, Eero died in 1961 at age 51 without ever seeing his vision become reality.