Renovated Gateway Arch museum in St. Louis reopens to public

The Gateway Arch Museum and Visitor Center in St. Louis reopened to the public Tuesday after a $380 million renovation of the grounds using public and private funding.

The 630-foot-tall, stainless steel monument, completed in 1965, remains essentially unchanged. But the grounds surrounding it underwent a makeover in a four-year period — namely to make the Arch and its facilities more visible and more accessible to the pedestrians and motorists.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on the renovated park and Tuesday’s event:

The museum and visitor center features a 46,000-square-foot multi-level addition, marking the next-to-last renovation project at the Gateway Arch National Park. The Old Courthouse renovations will be the final project. Included in the new museum are six themed exhibits, one of which is a gallery on the design and construction of the Arch. […]
Tuesday’s fanfare featured a ribbon cutting and speeches by U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson and County Executive Steve Stenger. […]
Stenger summed up the sentiment of area residents:
“This may be a national park, but on a personal level, it feels like ours,” he said.

The newspaper also produced this video from the day’s activities:

The Post-Dispatch also produced this interactive guide about the Gateway Arch’s changes and new features.

Here’s a time-lapse video of the construction:

The Kansas City Star also noted the park’s name change, as well:

What was once known as the Jefferson National Expansion Park has been recast as the Gateway Arch National Park. That change simply reflects how people think about the park, says Eric Moraczewski, executive director of Gateway Arch Park Foundation, a nonprofit group that partnered with the National Park Service to raise funds and oversee the renovation.

There is no intention to downgrade Jefferson’s importance or the park’s original purpose, which was to memorialize “the men who made possible the western territorial expansion of the United States,” including “the great explorers, Lewis and Clark, and the hardy hunters, trappers, frontiersmen and pioneers,” according to a 1933 statement by a local civic group that championed the idea of building something monumental on the Mississippi waterfront.

The name change, however, also reflects two facts that have long bedeviled the arch and its role within the National Park Service. Saarinen’s soaring arc of steel is an icon of the automobile age, an attraction that has always been more about playing to the passing audience of the interstates than any particular relevance to the idea of national expansion. It also honors historical events that are now understood as deeply problematic within the larger trajectory of American history, including the dispossession of Native American land, cultural genocide, the extension of slavery, centuries of conflict and ill will with Mexico, environmental degradation and the emergence of a myth of American exceptionalism.

The arch, in short, has always been beloved because it binds together two feel-good ideas that are essential to American identity: a heroic past of grit and conquest, and a triumphant future of innovation. Now, well into the 21st century, the challenge is how to disentangle and even dismantle those ideas while salvaging the arch as a cultural object.

The Gateway Arch sits several blocks from Route 66. But, like Grand Canyon National Park, it remains a popular side trip for many Route 66 travelers.

(Image of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis by PaulSh; image of new Gateway Arch entrance by Paul Sableman, both via Flickr)