Photography by Balthazar Korab, courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-KRB00-128
“I do think that everyone involved, and especially Eero Saarinen, was inspired by a particular something or place,” an anonymous person once wrote in an online conspiracy forum. “The place that I am referring to is Sirius.” The subject was the Gateway Arch, which has also been accused of being a “stargate,” a cosmic tuning fork, and a weather-controlling device that shoots positive ions out one leg and negative ions from the other. And it does have an alien feeling—a quality apparent even on the maquette scale, its cold, mathematical form reflected in what looks more like a Zen reflecting pool than the sludgy Mississippi River, full of catfish and farm runoff. In fact, everything in this model is idealized, from the riverboats parked in a perfect line to the supershiny dome of the Old Courthouse, as cleanly gold as a newly forged wedding ring. Why would the Arch come from Sirius? Because Sirius is the brightest star, the scorcher. America in 1960 was all about atom bombs and astronauts, bright flashes of all sorts, things always being on the up and up. It was about steel and pneumatics, about flying-car daydreams, about everything being even better tomorrow. One day, we’ll all be sailing through space, the cosmos pouring out in front of us like an endless royal carpet, and we will transcend death. That is what the Arch says sometimes, and why it feels so unearthly, so sublime.
