I’ve had friends who, arriving in St. Louis for the first time, expressed surprise that the Arch ran parallel to the river instead of hopping over it as they had expected. I was able to show them, with some pleasure, how important it was for the Arch to be as unlike a bridge as possible, nor should its leap seem to be born of purpose like the scoot of a housemaid from a mouse, because it does not fling itself into the sky from anxiety, as if it were being hotly pursued, but from exuberance, even glee; and because the space created by its loop is that of permanently flung-open arms.
Few friends knew who the architect of the Arch was, even though Saarinen was often said to own it, perhaps because they couldn’t spell his name. Presently, he is presumed to be one of the evil sorcerers in The Lord of the Rings.
I have often thought how much fun it would have been (first) if the Arch had been allowed to rise from, and fall back upon, the wharf and warehouse area that had been originally there instead of a freshly planted forest growth, in order to suggest not the primeval country to be conquered but the urban conclusion to be reached; and (second) if the Arch had been moved north to the end of the Eads Bridge with its rails and road, so that it functioned more literally as an arc de triomphe or, at least, a welcome mat.
Honest Eads, like the Eiffel Tower, shows its bones, and seems nothing but bones, although the deeply buried boxes that hold the piers remain obscure. You cannot be honest about everything. Eads crosses the river in three graceful cantilevers bearing a straight line of railing like a spear. The relationship between these two marvels would be even more beautiful if another bridge didn’t keep butting in and pretending to the eye it is a functional part of its Better. A literary critic must sometimes decide just what the scope and sway of a metaphor is. If I were to endorse the cliché and write that “Richard, King of England, has the heart of a lion” in the a.m., could a reader expect him to still have it in the p.? The answer depends upon the intended scope of the image. And if I really meant that he was a lion, does he then get to metaphorically sleep while his wife (a lioness?) performs her metaphorical stalk? This answer depends upon the depth of the image.
For architectural objects there are a pair of parallel questions: How far does the influence of the Arch’s presence reach? (Over the entire region in parts of two states?) And how specific should that influence be? (A multitude of arches in a rich feast of imitation, or only a few agreeable nods? And is it ever proper to build a bit higher or cover oneself with stainless paint?) Particularly important is the visual impact of the structure upon the park it has been placed in. Is the visitor encouraged to stroll about the ground, admire the Arch’s reflection in a pool or its changing appearance in the sky? Have a coffee with friends at a discreet and elegantly tabled patio? Ah, yes, but we aren’t in Paris, are we?
Suppose our intention was to satisfy the program by building a small room with a smaller door that squeezed and then released the view when a visitor walked through; in that case, the opening’s orientation would be clearly east to west, and we would pass from a familiar city dockside to a huge unknown. Now, the flow of the structure itself is strongly north to south, like that of the river (most tourists arrive from the northern side), while its space looks weakly west like a generous opening between rooms.
These are mind games I am playing, of course, but if one imagines for a moment how a few changes might affect the Arch’s nature, the way it actually acts might be more clearly understood. As a monument the Arch’s meaning has always been ambiguous, its orientation amphibolous. If the idea of the structure is to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase, then it ought to be standing astride the Mississippi River delta down in New Orleans, which is the Purchase’s defining location, even though not a whole lot of what is now Louisiana was acquired by the sale, since its territory was still claimed by Spain. The bag of land that was actually bought looks on maps like a cloud of heavy smoke that widens as it rises through a middle quarter of our country all the way to Canada. The Arch can only face west symbolically now, but in those treaty days, anything over the Hudson, past the Ohio, certainly beyond the Mississippi, was west; even the Midwest was far west to New Yorkers. “Go west, young man,” we once advised, as if the West were unlimited opportunity; but if a cowboy went west, he died. In other words, the location of what is west changes as the meaning of the direction does. Since we have reached the Pacific by now, and can go west no farther by horse, wagon, or walking, the American imagination will have to go west in the head, as Gertrude Stein advised.
The Arch remains stationary, but the years revolve; there is always movement among the clouds and strength or weakness to the sun; rains run clear as a mountain stream down its stainless legs, while onlookers, dizzy-eyed, explore their own awe. Perhaps, for a moment, the visitor will wonder why this, of all things…this should exist here: a kind of continuing miracle, a ding an sich. Surely this is a symbol for human aspiration, a triumph of engineering, a monument to mathematics, to Plato, as I prefer to think, and it should never have been built to celebrate land-grabbing Sooners, hunters, or homesteaders, or even been erected to applaud Jefferson’s strategy for securing a seaport from the French, even less as a clever move of Napoleon’s to screw the Brits; nor should it have been mistakenly allowed to stand for Lewis and Clark’s point of embarkation; and how great and apt the irony that just below the Arch, by a wide and steady staircase, muddy water runs, often apparently as firm at the surface as steel, yet in all ways fluid, wearing its way into the earth, becoming dense as gruel, as stained as any intestine, more inevitable and persistent than man himself, the way a clock is a silent circle of life, and clauses—like these—made of metaphors—like these—line its banks.
Arch and river, like water and steel, are a symbolic husband and wife: the river in reality in constant motion, but to sight an utter standstill; the Arch, in reality puddle iron and concrete, yet at any moment of time, as light as air, and always on the rise, pure as the geometry that conceived it; while nearby lies a slow flow that goes wherever chance permits, though steady as pavement, made mostly of sewage, runoff, and mud.
As a memorial, the Arch is ageless in both material and image, and like many modern buildings desires to remain young and as independent of its surroundings as an arrival from outer space. That is, its contrast to its context is complete. It will not be wider or higher next year than it is today; it does not fear the tent caterpillar or deep freezes or peeling paint. Bent as it is, its back feels no ache. These immunities ridicule the settlers who pour through it on their way to plow the plains, kill buffalo, and deface the beaches of Malibu with their money.
Most monuments want a space around them through which they may be viewed. Cathedrals, in areas of urban cheek by jowl, cause the eye to rise, hunting a point to see them whole, and where possible, grounds are cleared around them so that a proper impression can be made. Even paintings carry with them their hanging and viewing instructions. We want General Retreat to rear up in the middle of our city’s square, on axis as well as on his horse.
The Mississippi, not to be messed with, is annoyed at being such an afterthought, if a thought at all. The trees around the Arch will grow tall, die of disease, endure smog. The Arch represents the life that is possible to inanimate things, the forest the eventual come and go of organic ones. Its park is an integral element of its design and should be maintained in a spirit of homage that includes the flotillas of birds on its ponds, the fragility of its trees, the visual importance of its spaces, but does not preclude modifications, and might wisely rescue the river from irrelevance at the same time, for one day the river will rise and claim the ground.
Millions have stared up the legs of the Arch and felt faint when the motion of the clouds made it seem to move, too. Millions have doubtless also been informed of what it “stands for,” as if its legs did more than hold it up. Actually, like the perfect clotheshorse, it is all leg. It does its memorial subject no favor by succeeding so famously, because it is not to honor the luck or wisdom of the Louisiana Purchase that the crowds come, as I have already suggested. It is not to remember that Lewis and Clark began their great journey here, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri. It is not to take snapshots beneath the Gateway to the West. The snapshooters come to snap the Arch. And be blown away. To cry, “Wow” and then wonder—where are the restrooms? For the same reason, tourists slow their stroll in the Miesian Chicago square in order to admire Picasso’s marvelous construction there. A truly beautiful monument will eclipse its occasion. How would you feel if people came to see your tomb, not to remember you but to see your tomb, because you, like General Grant, have left the building? Such overshadowing is, in fact, the best proof that the monument has genuine aesthetic quality. Being, not meaning, is always what matters.
The Arch is mighty good business. Public beauty pays. City after city, monument after monument, park upon park, prove it. Paris, Florence, Prague. Or, close at hand: Chicago. Yet city fathers pursue the quick buck as if it were a startled deer, forgetting in their greed that the quick buck is lean, chews tough, and is never lasting.
We build skyscrapers as high as the land they stand on is expensive. We throw bridge spans farther than Washington his dollar so as not to inconvenience the car. Workers walk about on beams or cling to wires to make sure our businessmen have handsome views. Nowadays our demand for miniature monuments is small. We must have size: Domes must be huge, steeples high, vistas vast, stones many, and expenses great.
The handiest memorial has always been the skull, especially when there are many of them. The catacombs do a good job reminding us of what we’re bound for: anonymity. But the skull is too habitual about its business and quickly becomes boring, like a parrot that’s been taught to say, “Don’t chortle, you’re mortal” as often as the cuckoo. The Arch, deathless in design, has become an emblem of the human spirit on a good day. It hopes for finer things than we are likely to realize. Stainless, there is no guilt on its conscience. It beckons us to go west in the head. It tries to say that murder is not what human beings should do best, nor catacombs what we should be remembered for: Truth and beauty, grace and creation—they are the greater part of what goodness is. As the tourist lady I overheard in front of the Gateway said to her friend, her face raised to the smile of the sky: “My goodness, it takes a long way to get where it’s going, doesn’t it.” I wanted to reply: “Before it has begun, it has already arrived.” But then I remembered: I had expressed that thought on another occasion—about the Mississippi.
William H. Gass, the David May Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Washington University, is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including three National Book Critics Circle Awards for Criticism and a Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He delivered this essay at the “On the Riverfront: St. Louis and The Gateway Arch” symposium at Washington University in January. Gass most recently appeared in SLM this April, with “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a collaborative project with photographer Michael Eastman.
