We visited St. Louis, MO to visit the Gateway Arch.  It is the tallest man-made monument in the U.S., taller than the Washington Monument.  It is a beautiful and simple design arch, very visible from miles around and as the skin is stainless steel, very shiny and pretty.  We rode to the top (and back down) in a small ‘capsule’ about 5 feet in diameter and round.  Five people can fit inside but it’s quite cramped  if you get five adults in there!  It’s designed to stay upright as it rides first vertically and then slants more horizontal as it gets to the top.

The view from the top is breathtaking!  The viewing area up top is quite small and has small windows to see out of that are angled oddly because of the shape of the arch.  The walls below the window are carpeted and designed so you can lean/rest your body against them in order to see out the windows.  But, it was definitely worth it!

The arch was built in the 1960s and was designed by a famous architect, Eero Saarinen.  He wanted it to be very simplistic in design rather than ‘fancy’.  But, that simple design made it very complicated to build.  They show a movie at the visitor center that explains the process of building each triangular section and how they mounted them.  The arch took over 3 years to built and while the estimate was that 13 men would lose their lives during construction, no one did!  The footage during the movie of the men at the top of the arch, walking along, hanging by one rope while guiding huge pieces of metal etc. was scary – no one had a safety harness on!

The arch at the top is 630 feet high.  There are some skyscrapers in the city that are reaching that height, but as the arch is right along the river at the edge of the city, it still stands out.

Here are some pictures we took: