


The new museum features exhibits on a variety of topics including westward expansion and the construction of the Arch, all told through a St. Within the center, a project to rebuild the Museum at the Gateway Arch was completed in July 2018. Underneath the arch is a visitor center, entered from a circular entryway facing the Old Courthouse. When the Civil Courts building was built in the 1920s, the Chouteau family sued to regain the property belonging to the Old Courthouse because it had been deeded in perpetuity to be a courthouse.

To the west of the Old Courthouse is a Greenway between Market and Chestnut Streets which is only interrupted by the Civil Courts Building which features a pyramid model of the Mausoleum of Mausolus (which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) on its roof. The courthouse is the only portion of the memorial west of Interstate 44. It was the site of the local trials in the Dred Scott case. Its dome was built during the American Civil War and is similar to the dome on the United States Capitol which was also built during the Civil War. It marks the location over which the arch reaches. The Old Courthouse is built on land originally deeded by St.

Several publications noted that the addition of Gateway Arch as a national park eroded the significance associated with the "national park" designation, and some suggested that the change was made in order to promote tourism rather than to conserve a nature area.Ĭomponents The Gateway Arch This change has been controversial due to the nature of the site ("national parks" typically involve significant natural landscapes and significant opportunities for nature recreation, whereas sites that have primarily historical and architectural significance are usually given other NPS designations). The area surrounding the arch was redesignated as the "Gateway Arch National Park" (a national park) in 2018. The park is maintained by the National Park Service (NPS). The Gateway Arch was completed on October 28, 1965. The immediate surroundings of the Gateway Arch were initially designated the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (a national memorial) by secretarial order on December 21, 1935. It is the smallest national park in the United States at 91 acres (37 ha), less than 2% the size of the next-smallest, Hot Springs National Park. Louis a park along the Mississippi River on the site of the earliest buildings of the city the Old Courthouse, a former state and federal courthouse where the Dred Scott case originated and the 140,000 sq ft (13,000 m 2) museum at the Gateway Arch. The national park consists of the Gateway Arch, a steel catenary arch that has become the definitive icon of St.
