St. Louis’ Gateway Arch turns 50

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)

ST. LOUIS

Dedicated fans of the Gateway Arch celebrated its golden anniversary with speeches, $1 rides to the top and an autograph session with some of the men who built it.

A lucky few got to peer out of its top hatch, 630 feet above the riverfront.

Wednesday was the 50th anniversary of “topping day,” Oct. 28, 1965, when the last triangular piece of the monument was fitted into place to great fanfare below. The first visitors didn’t get to go to the top for nearly two years, and the grand staircase wasn’t finished until 2003, but St. Louis regards the topping as the premier event.

“The Arch was completed on a day that those of us who are old enough will never forget,” said Mayor Francis Slay, who was 10 at the time. “It seemed like the entire world was focused on the Arch on that day to see if the last piece would fit.”

Slay spoke during a ceremony at Fourth Street on the east side of the Old Courthouse on Wednesday. In the background were the Arch and Luther Ely Smith Square, still being landscaped in a $380 million reshaping of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. That work is scheduled for completion in 2017.

Earlier Wednesday, National Park Service officials allowed reporters, photographers and some park employees to stick their heads out of the 18-inch diameter hatch on the top of the Arch. Park historian Bob Moore enjoyed the wide view for the first time in 25 years on the job.

Rhonda Schier, new chief of museum services, called the privilege “a heart-pounding experience.”

Members of the public lined up for $1 rides on the trams to the enclosed observation deck. That was the adult ticket price July 24, 1967, when it opened to visitors. It’s now $10 for adults, $5 for children.

Fretting in line was Zalexia Johnson, 18, of East St. Louis, who arrived with fellow students from Collinsville Christian Academy.

“I’m actually super afraid to go up,” she said. “I’m extremely scared of heights. So we’re gonna see how this goes .”

About 2,900 people rode up Wednesday, double the usual attendance for a weekday in late October.

At the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park, 135 people waited patiently in line to meet 30 of the men who built the Arch.

The workers stayed busy autographing posters and plastic “hard hats” offered for sale.

“It’s a big, warm crowd,” said a smiling Ken Kolkmeier, project manager on the Arch-raising job. “My hand is cramped.”

Later, he took part in a panel discussion at the museum with Moore; Susan Saarinen, the daughter of Arch designer and architect Eero Saarinen; and two granddaughters of Luther Ely Smith, namesake of the small park downtown and a civic leader who proposed the riverfront memorial in 1933.

The “meet the builders” segment was billed as the last of the annual events, which began in 2002.

It also was the largest – organizers ran out of keepsake posters and had to close the long line before the event ended.

Among those present were Don Horton, an iron worker atop the south leg; Mike Moriarty, then a teenage pipe insulator; Jerry Carpentier, an elevator installer on the “creeper derricks” that rose with the Arch; Jack Wright, a civil engineer just out of college; and Archie Brittain, who helped fabricate the steel panels in Warren, Pa.

“I like how the kids always ask neat questions, like ‘Weren’t we scared up there?’” said Horton. “Well, yes, but we did the work.”

Also in the crowd was Percy Green, the longtime civil-rights activist who was arrested in 1964 for climbing the unfinished Arch to seek construction jobs for black workers. Green, 80, said of the Arch, “To me, it still only symbolizes racial discrimination in employment.”

When it was built, the construction union locals were all-white or nearly so. A landmark federal lawsuit over hiring at the project helped open the trades to black workers.

Keith Lamb asked workers to autograph small sheets of stainless steel. The exterior of the Arch is stainless.

“The Arch is so beautiful in form and simplicity, but it’s also complex,” said Lamb, an art teacher who has built models of the 630-foot monument. “Anyone who has tried that knows how challenging that job was.”

Margaret Nulsen, who was 19 when the Arch was topped, said, “We should all be very thankful for what these men accomplished.”

Joe Madigan, 31, a visitor from Cleveland, said, “And to think they built it without computers.”

During the panel discussion, the audience of about 200 cheered loudly when Kolkmeier noted that no workers were killed building the Arch, even though insurance estimators predicted 13 deaths.

“The welders and riggers who hoisted and put those pieces in place were very, very skilled and dedicated,” he said.