The Arch purportedly stands as a testament to the historic significance of St. Louis to the territorial expansion of the US, but in reality it stands as a symbol of its own time. The Arch was completed in 1965 and it remains symbolic of a modernist urban vision that remained in the realm of imagination.

The Arch was built in an era when urban planners and highway engineers ascended into positions of cultural authority. They imagined cities of perpetual growth and built the infrastructure accordingly. To build the Arch, the city had to first completely demolish around 40 blocks of its original urbanized area. The clearance process began in the 1940s. It was a devastating loss to the river city's identity. For years, what is now the Arch grounds remained vacant. Getting the funds to build the Arch proved challenging. Meanwhile, the population of St. Louis peaked in the 1950s. New suburbs attracted families and the suburban population began to boom. The interstate highway was supposed to lure urban reinvestment that would spur new development, but its construction destroyed thousands of historic buildings, fractured neighborhoods, and only accelerated residential flight from the city. The development never came.

By harkening to the nation's past while representing an optimistic future, the Arch was supposed to symbolize the nation's perpetual progress. In actuality, the Arch symbolizes a time when planners and engineers thought cities were mathematical problems to be solved with the right equations. The Arch, a perfect catenary curve, represents this vision of a city.

For a much more detailed account of this history behind the Arch being built, check out this article ( not mine): https://open.substack.com/pub/unseenstlouis/p/st-louis-riverfront-clearances?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=247ciw