Wallace Stegner, the late historian known as the dean of writers on the American West, once said that our national parks are “the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic. They reflect us at our best rather than…
Photo by Bob Schorfheide
Ken Salazar was among the tourists who visited the Gateway Arch for the first time in July. He got the deluxe tour, inasmuch the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is a national park and Mr. Salazar, a former Democratic…
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in front of Post-Dispatch Platform. Eddie Roth/Post-Dispatch
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in town yesterday afternoon, ostensibly to talk about federal spending for job creation and economic recovery. But it turns out he had monumental plans,…
Laurie Skrivan/Post-Dispatch
St. Louis is on today’s itinerary for Ken Salazar, the former Democratic senator from Colorado whom President Barack Obama appointed as the nation’s 50th Secretary of the Interior.
It’s a stop in a series of low-key visits the secretary is…
Conceptual scheme for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial 1947 colored pencil on tracing paper. Eero Saarinen, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Drawn by J. Henderson Barr.
Who wants to commune with legendary architect Eero Saarinen and design a coda to his transcendent masterwork, the…
Remember all the fuss during last year’s campaign about how Democrats were going to restrict gun rights? Turns out it was a bit off target.
Congress last week expanded them, instead. A provision in the credit card reforms bill permits concealed…
1962 aerial photo of grounds where Gateway Arch would be constructed.
“Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future,” a major retrospective on the brilliant career of the Finnish-American architect, closed Monday after a lengthy run at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
The…
Conceptual scheme for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial 1947 colored pencil on tracing paper. Cranbrook Archives.
The finish line is within sight for a process the National Park Service began nearly a year ago. The public has until midnight Monday to weigh in…
Rendering of the east view of the Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton Building, designed by Daniel Libeskind. Image by Miller Hare.
Sen. John C. Danforth’s vision of developing a brilliant cultural institution housed in a world class piece of…
Rick Bonasch, a planner at RHCDA who in his spare time blogs and thinks very clearly about a wide range of urban issues, sent out an email a couple of weeks ago.
His purpose was to see if a bunch of people…
The student design proposals for the St. Louis Arch Grounds/Riverfront will be on display December 3, 2008 to January 15, 2009 at Architecture St. Louis/Landmarks Association, 911 Washington Ave., St. Louis.
R.S.V.P for opening reception, to be held Wednesday, December 3, 2008,…
Huy R. Mach | Post-Dispatch
Michael Allen’s terrific blog Ecology of Absence reported that “Late last week, John Danforth sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne stating that the Danforth Foundation no longer intends to build a museum on the…
Former U.S. Sen. John Danforth has exhorted the St. Louis region to “think big” about the future of two of its transcendent assets — the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi riverfront.
He sees both as moribund, for…
J.B. Forbes | Post-Dispatch
The National Park Service has released its proposed “preferred alternative” for a new management plan for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
The document’s purpose is to set out the operating principles and objectives for the Gateway Arch, Arch grounds, Old…
Obama at the Arch
Updated below
The Secret Service estimated 80,000 people. The city police say 100,000.
Whatever the number, the Gateway Arch grounds easily accommodated a very big crowd for Barack Obama this afternoon.
I had signed up for press credentials, which would have…
A group of advocates for our National Parks met with members of the editorial board yesterday.
The topic was Sen. John Danforth’s and the Danforth Foundation’s call to transform public access to the Arch grounds and challenge to think big about how Eero…
Let me repeat my prejudices:
I think Sen. John Danforth’s and the Danforth Foundation’s big idea of developing a brilliant cultural institution as a companion to the Gateway Arch — housed in a structure and situated at a place on the Arch grounds…
We’re susceptible here in St. Louis to what might be called “fix-a-phobia” — a nervous condition caused by deep and sometimes justified concern that civic decisions are preordained by the community’s power elite.
The ongoing effort to rethink public access between downtown…
I became fully repatriated to St. Louis yesterday, as moving trucks arrived and unloaded all my and my family’s stuff at our new home in St. Louis’ Shaw Neighborhood.
This represents the second time I have…
It will be recalled that what became the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and Gateway Arch began in late 1933 when Luther Ely Smith, a prominent Republican lawyer and civic activist, peered out of a train window at the shabby St. Louis…
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