The St. Louis Arch
written by blue-dog
on March 4th, 2009
, 12 submissions
, 7 comments
(6 votes)
The St Louis Arch designed by Finnish-American Eero Saarinen and Engineered by Hannskari Bandel; The St. Louis Arch Is the tallest monument in the United States, standing a 630 feet. It stands near where the Lewis and Clark expedition began (1803-1806).
It took two years to construct the Arch, ( 2/12/1963 – 10/28/1965) and what makes The Arch unique is it is a catenary curve; That shape that a free-hanging links of chain or rope takes when held at both ends hanging upside down. The distance between the legs is also 630 feet. Astonishing to note is the margin of error while building the Arch was 1/64 of an inch. imagine no computers, very hard to have made such a precisely beautiful architectural wonder with the crude tools of the middle 1960’S. I read that all the survey calculation were done at night so the suns rays would not distort the readings.
If you do not get claustrophobic, you can ride a little tram car up to the top and Get a bird’s eye view of the Mississippi river and the court house where the Dred Scott case (1857 ) was held. It was also here On the Arch grounds that the largest peaceful political rally (10/18/08) in north America was held for our now president elect Barack Obama.
I hope you like these photographs. I took these in 1974 while on a vacation in St Louis. I was living in California at this time. My family was living here in St. Louis. My life and my family’s lives changed dramatically soon after these were taken, that will have to be told another time. All of the building and the riverfront, And boats and our lives have changed in 35 years, but the Arch and the court house have stayed the same.
Link: http://www.nps.gov/jeff/
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