Gateway to the West Historic District

A national memorial to westward expansion built by demolishing the very 19th-century riverfront blocks that had made St. Louis a gateway to the West in the first place, preserving only a courthouse where an enslaved man once sued for his freedom.

St. Louis grew from a French fur-trading post founded in 1764 into the primary jumping-off point for American westward expansion, a role that earned it the nickname 'Gateway to the West.' By the early 20th century, its original riverfront district had become a decaying warren of 19th-century warehouses and storefronts, and in 1935 the federal government designated the site the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, authorizing the demolition of roughly 40 blocks to make way for a national monument.

Only two buildings from the original riverfront survived the clearance: the Old Courthouse, where an enslaved man named Dred Scott first sued for his freedom in 1847, and the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, known as the Old Cathedral. The Dred Scott case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1857 in a decision that inflamed sectional tensions ahead of the Civil War.

Architect Eero Saarinen won a national design competition in 1947-48 for the memorial's centerpiece, a soaring stainless steel catenary arch, though construction did not begin until 1963 and finished in 1965. At 630 feet, the Gateway Arch remains the tallest man-made monument in the United States. The site was redesignated Gateway Arch National Park in 2018, and a tram system inside the Arch's legs continues to carry visitors to an observation deck near its top.