Gateway Arch Finally Connects to Downtown St. Louis

The Gateway Arch Park Foundation in St. Louis is leading a campaign to better connect the Gateway Arch to downtown. A combination of projects, including renovation of the entrance to the arch itself, the visitor center, and open space around the arch, are intended to improve the experience for visitors. 

Valkenburgh Associates worked with Cooper Robertson and James Carpenter Design Associates to create a large glass entrance, new museum, movie theater, gift shop and cafe for the arch itself. Valkenburgh also redesigned the entrance to face west towards downtown, including a pedestrian plaza built over Interstate 44. The plaza provide dramatically improved pedestrian connections to downtown destinations such as Kiener Plaza Park and Citygarden, the new National Blues Museum that opened in 2016, and Ballpark Village, the mixed-use district around Busch Stadium.  

Says Ryan McClure, spokesperson for the Gateway Arch Park Foundation:

"The arch restoration represents a lot of where we’ve been as a city and where we want to go....But until this project, the arch was separated from the city it represented.”