St. Louis Gateway Arch
The Gateway Arch is a 630-foot-tall monument in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a weighted catenary arch, it is the world's tallest arch and Missouri's tallest accessible structure. Some sources consider it the tallest human-made monument in the Western Hemisphere.
Gateway Arch Facts
Construction on the Arch began on February 12, 1963; the last section was put into place on October 28, 1965.
The Arch weighs 17,246 tons.
The 142 stainless-steel sections used to build the Arch required almost 900 tons of stainless steel.
The Arch was built at a cost of $13 million (about $130 million in today’s dollars).
The Arch’s shape is a catenary curve, the mathematical term for the shape a free-hanging chain takes when held at both ends.
More than 145 million people have visited the park since construction on the Arch started in 1963.
Fun fact: The Secret Service forbids U.S. presidents from riding the tram to the top of the Gateway Arch because the tight, enclosed space and small observation area make it nearly impossible to secure against potential threats.
Second fun fact: The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is engineered to safely bend and flex. It can withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour and is designed to sway up to 18 inches (9 inches in either direction) during extreme weather conditions like severe storms or high winds. When we lived in St. Louis we took many people up in the arch, Margery was always very uncomfortable with the moving sensation (the small tight elevators that shift to accommodate the arch angle are a close second on the uncomfortable scale).
