The Gateway Arch: A Biography

236 Pages·2013·3.37 MB·English

by  Tracy Campbell

The Gateway Arch

Tracy Campbell
The
Gateway
Arch
a biography
New Haven & London
frontispiece: “Topping Out” Day, October 28, 1965. Arthur Witman
Photographic Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri
Research Center–St. Louis.
Copyright © 2013 by Tracy Campbell.
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Tracy, 1962–
The Gateway Arch: a biography / Tracy Campbell.
pages cm. — (Icons of America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-16949-2 (cloth : alkaline paper) 1. Gateway Arch
(Saint Louis, Mo.)—History. 2. Saint Louis (Mo.)—Buildings,
structures, etc. 3. Arches—Missouri—Saint Louis—
Design and construction. I. Title.
F474.S265G372 2013
977.8'65—dc23 2012045255
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Icons of America
Mark Crispin Miller, Series Editor
Icons of America is a series of short works written by leading scholars, critics,
and writers, each of whom tells a new and innovative story about American
history and culture through the lens of a single iconic individual, event,
object, or cultural phenomenon.
The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story, by Edward Berenson
The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon, by Leo Braudy
Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, by Jerome Charyn
The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison, by Stephen Cox
Andy Warhol, by Arthur C. Danto
Our Hero: Superman on Earth, by Tom De Haven
Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein
Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, by Steve Fraser
No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4′33″, by Kyle Gann
Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell
Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, by Susan Jacoby
Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams,
by Mark Kingwell
Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial
Complex, by James Ledbetter
The Liberty Bell, by Gary Nash
The Hamburger: A History, by Josh Ozersky
Gypsy: The Art of the Tease, by Rachel Shteir
King’s Dream, by Eric J. Sundquist
Jackson Pollock, by Evelyn Toynton
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, by Gore Vidal
Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown, by David Yaffe
Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory,
by Jonathan Zimmerman
To the memory of Shearer Davis Bowman
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Saarinen’s Cathedral 1
one
The New York of the West 8
two
Getting Things Done 25
three
The St. Louis Municipal Parking Lot 44
four
A Peculiarly Happy Form 61
five
The Architect 87
Contents
six
The Laughingstock of the World 109
seven
“Got It Made” 125
eight
Expendable Culture 146
nine
Symbol and Symptom 161
Notes 175
Bibliography 199
Index 211
viii
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the assistance provided by a host of people who
work in the following libraries and archives: The State Historical
Society of Missouri at the University of Missouri–Columbia; the
Cranbrook Archives; the Archives of American Art at the Smith-
sonian; the College of Wooster; the State Historical Society of
Missouri Research Center, University of Missouri–St. Louis; the
Missouri History Museum; the University of Kentucky; and the Jef-
ferson National Expansion Memorial Archives. I especially thank
Sonya Rooney of Special Collections at Washington University in
St. Louis and Laura Tatum, formerly of the Archives and Manu-
scripts Department at Yale University Library, for their help. Roger
Griffin of Oxford Brookes University kindly worked on my behalf
to obtain the image of the Adalberto Libera arch. Pierluigi Serraino,
AIA, generously shared Saarinen interview materials conducted in
1959 by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research.
My agent, John W. Wright, is a steadfast friend who believed in
this project from the very beginning. My thanks to Jaya Aninda
ix