St Louis Arch

The Gateway Arch is an arch that is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri. It was built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States. At 630 feet (192 m), it is the tallest man-made monument in the United States, Missouri's tallest accessible building, and the largest architectural structure designed as a weighted or flattened catenary arch. The arch is located at the site of St. Louis' foundation, on the west bank of the Mississippi River where Pierre Laclède, just after noon on February 14, 1764, told his aide, Auguste Chouteau, to build a city.[7][8]The Gateway Arch was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and German-American structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel in 1947. Construction began on February 12, 1963, and ended on October 28, 1965, costing US$13 million at the time (approximately $94,700,000 in 2013). The monument opened to the public on June 10, 1967.