Part of the Icons of America series - short works written by leading scholars...who tell a new and innovative story about American history and culture through the lens of a single iconic individual, event, object or cultural phenomenon.
Growing up in St. Louis we are spoon fed the "Monument to A Dream" story of the development of the Gateway Arch but there is much much more to the history of this icon. Campbell traces the project back to its roots at the beginning of the 1900s and examines if the Gateway Arch truly achieved any of its public objectives - memorializing westward expansion and Thomas Jefferson and revitalizing the St. Louis riverfront and downtown. The answers he finds for the most part are no, it did not achieve those objectives.
It was interesting to see the political machinations that went on over decades to result in the monument we enjoy today. The Arch was by no means inevitable and there were countless times when the whole project could have just disappeared. The description of the fraud and corruption during the initial ballot measure in the 1930s to start the Arch project was particularly sobering. This book is a thorough examination of the failures of urban planning in the first half of the 20th century and an intriguing deep look at the twisted and sometimes troubled history of the development of the Gateway Arch.
