When the 630 ft., stainless-steel Gateway Arch was completed in 1965 – the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial – it forever changed not only the St. Louis, MI,waterfront, but also the conventional wisdom about monument-making in America.

To architect Eero Saarinen, who had submitted the arch design for a 1947 competition and died of cancer before  onstruction was completed, it was important that the arch be a “landmark of our time…. Neither an obelisk nor a rectangular box nor a dome seemed right.”