When the new Gateway Arch Museum and Visitor's Center opens July 3, people from all over the world will have a better sense of how it felt, looked, and sounded to be in St. Louis centuries ago: trading with the Osage, watching horse races and auctioneering after Mass, stocking up to head west, rebuilding after the Great Fire, mixing polyglot cultural influences, hanging out on the docks of the third largest port in the nation...
On Thursday, a media tour started by peering over a railing at what might be the largest terrazzo map in the country: a stone mosaic of the nation's rivers and trails with St. Louis at the center. Then we moved into the first part of the museum, the journey west, with its giant images of the river and the Osage.
"We tried to create views," says Bill Haley of Haley Sharpe Design, "so you can see people living in the landscape. It's all about movement. The whole story's about movement."
We follow that movement on the river, in covered wagons, on the railroad. At the supply store, you can figure out what provisions you will need for your imagined journey west. Resting your phone atop an old-fashioned camera, you can take a selfie outside a railroad car just as travelers used to have their photographs taken, in a similar burst of pride, before they boarded.
See also: Renovated Arch museum and visitor center to open this summer
But this is no longer just a story of heading west; it's also the story of those who settled in St. Louis. Instead of beginning in 1804 with the Louisiana Purchase, it starts 40 years earlier, when St. Louis was a lively and multicultural place with French, Spanish, African-American, and Osage citizens, and gives us rare details of everyday life.
Arch historian Bob Moore shows off a full-size Colonial Creole house, 15 feet by 15 feet, its vertical logs all hewn by hand. This is an architecture that existed, in exactly this way, only here. And it existed long before treaties shaped our boundaries.
One particular treaty did shape those boundaries, though. An original painting was commissioned from artist Michael Haynes, showing Napoleon signing the Louisiana Purchase decree. Another oversized painting by Haynes shows church just letting out on a Sunday, with people milling about outside the church that served as the forerunner to the Old Cathedral. "You can see the priest greeting people as they come out," says Moore, "and see that guy leaning up against the building with the bell at his feet? He was the auctioneer. Every Sunday after Mass, they'd have an auction. When the Americans first came to town, they were horrified."
Next comes St. Louis in 1852: a meticulously detailed, 3-D printed, hand-painted model. The grayish brown of the river actually looks wet. Not only do the tiny street lamps light up, but the lighting will change every day to match the hour. "We wanted to show how busy the levee was," Moore says, "and how much material would have been stockpiled there. This was the third busiest port in the United States." Interactive screens will allow visitors to find out who was working on those boats, what was being loaded—all the small facts that make it possible to tell St. Louis' story.
1 of 4
2 of 4
3 of 4
4 of 4
It's hard to tear yourself away from the model, especially after literally hearing the roar and crackle of the Great Fire that took place just a few years earlier. The museum is full of interactive technology, as well as familiar sights, such as the teepee and stagecoach from the old museum and "a lot of things we're bringing out of storage that people have never seen," says Moore. "They've been stored for 60 or 70 years. Like Samantha Packwood's side saddle." When Samantha was 9, she rode that saddle all the way to Oregon on a mule.
See also: 50 Things You Never Knew About the Arch (see #48–50)
That's the kind of courage and determination honored on the video wall as visitors emerge from the various hubs of the museum. And whatever inspires you, you can choose those images and words to create a souvenir postcard. (What's chosen will also provide feedback for the museum, as visitors' comments and experiences will help shape the museum's future.)
The video wall is stunning, and our guides waved toward the café that will soon open in front of it, near the movie theater and shiny new store—and the old bas-relief Arch sculpture.
The past is all here. What's exciting is how much of it will be new to us.
