When visiting Cairo a couple of years ago, I was surprised at how impressive the Pyramids of Giza were up close compared to what I was expecting. The same was true recently at the Gateway Arch in St Louis.
I’d seen photos of the Gateway Arch, along with footage of it when Cardinals games would go to break during innings, but hadn’t ever had a huge desire to head to St Louis just to see it. I’ve been converted though as the Arch is an amazingly beautiful piece of architecture that made me happy every time I saw it during our 11 days in St Louis. Considering our hotel was right next to the Arch, I saw it a lot!
Staying right next to the Gateway Arch meant we got to see it by both day and night. During the day, from a distance it almost looked like it was clad with stone. Lit up at nighttime though, you can tell that its exterior is covered with stainless steel.
Gateway Arch National Park
The Arch is located in Gateway Arch National Park which is a beautiful park to walk around in. There’s the Gateway Arch trail which encircles the Arch, but the park itself covers more than 90 acres and includes other walking trails, ponds and great views alongside the Mississippi River.
One of the nice features of the National Park itself is that it’s pet-friendly. Dogs aren’t allowed inside the visitor center, but they can wander around the park with you which gave us an opportunity to get some cute photos of Truffles looking like she’s ready to drop her debut album.
We were in St Louis over Easter, so we had to take the Easter bunny to the Arch too 😉
Something I hadn’t realized until more recently (in my defense, I didn’t move to the US from the UK until I was 29!) is that you can go up inside the Gateway Arch to the top. Unless you suffer from claustrophobia, I’d highly recommend getting tickets to the top of the Arch – more about how you get up there in a moment.
Gateway Arch Visitor Center
To visit the Arch’s visitor center and/or go up inside, you have to head underground. You might think that you’d go to the triangular bases of the Arch, but that’s not the case. Instead, as you approach the National Historic Landmark you’ll see a path leading down to a building below ground.
After going through security you can access the Visitor Center and museum exhibits. You can visit these areas fee-free and they’re worth checking out even if you’re not planning on going up inside the Arch. It’s also where you can get your National Park Passport stamps.
The museum provides the history of the arch, as well as other exhibits about the history of St Louis.
There’s a café where you can get drinks and snacks…
…along with a gift shop where you can pick up souvenirs from your visit. There’s a particularly fun souvenir you can buy which is an Arch created using cable that was once used to pull the tram cars up and down the Gateway Arch.
In the center of that zone is a replica of the final section of the Arch. There’s some information about the Arch inside it, along with screens displaying what can be seen from the top.
That’s a great feature for people who either aren’t able to get tickets to the top or who are afraid of heights and/or enclosed spaces so that they don’t have to miss out completely.
St Louis Gateway Arch & Tram Facts
Here are some fun facts about the Gateway Arch:
- Height & width – The Gateway Arch is 630 feet high as well as 630 feet wide. This was surprising because it looks taller than it is wide, but that’s just an optical illusion.
- Steel – There are 142 stainless steel panels on its exterior each of which are 12 feet long. That apparently makes it the most steel in a single structure.
- Wind – The Arch was designed to be able to sway 9″ in either direction to handle winds of up to 150 mph as well as earthquakes.
- Trams – There are two trams in the Arch – one on the north side and one on the south side. The north tram opened in June 1967, while the south tram opened in March 1968.
- Steps – There are 1,076 steps to the top, although they’re closed to the public.
- Designer – The Gateway Arch was designed by architect Eero Saarinen. It was the winner of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial competition which was tasked with creating a memorial in St Louis on the banks of the Mississippi River. Architects submitted their designs in 1947, with 172 submissions being received. There were all kinds of designs from parks to sculptures and more, with Saarinen’s submission for an Arch being the ultimate winner the following year.
- Steve Harvey Moment – Eero Saarinen’s son Eliel submitted his own entry to the competition. Eliel received a telegram stating that his design had progressed to the second round, only to learn afterwards that it was a mistake and that it was his father’s design which had successfully made it to the second round.
- Construction – Despite Eero Saarinen’s design being chosen as the winner in 1948, construction didn’t begin until February 12, 1963 and was finally completed on October 28, 1965.
- Opening – Although the Arch’s construction was completed in 1965, it didn’t open to the public until June 10, 1967.
- Cost – The Gateway Arch cost $13 million to build which is ~$88 million in today’s money.
Gateway Arch Ticket Prices
The visitor center and museum are free to visit, but if you want to enhance your visit – and you really should – there is a cost.
There are three different activities you can book:
- Tram ride to the top of the Arch
- ‘Monument To The Dream’ movie
- Riverfront cruise
You can buy any one of these individually, or you can save money by buying combos of two or all three of these activities. At the time of our visit in April 2023, these were the various ticket options. $3 of the ticket fees go to the National Park Service, so if you have a National Parks Annual Pass then take that along with you to save $3 on the tram ride or movie ticket.
Monument To The Dream Movie
Shae and I weren’t interested in taking the riverboat cruise, so we went for the tram and movie combo for $21 per person. I highly recommend paying the few extra bucks to watch the Monument To The Dream movie before riding the tram. The movie lasts about half an hour and was an incredibly interesting movie which follows the construction of the Arch back in the 1960s. Watching the construction workers so high up without any safety harnesses had us wincing in our seats, but it all ends well! The movie helps give you an even greater appreciation for all the work and technical ability that went into the Arch’s construction.
We booked our tram and movie tickets ahead of time. Both of them are timed tickets, so you’ll need to make sure you pick times that don’t overlap, especially with the movie lasting about 30 minutes. Something that’s potentially useful depending on your other plans in St Louis is that you don’t have to do one right after another (although we did). Instead, you can book your movie ticket for one day and your tram ticket for another day entirely if you want to and still get the combo discount.
Gateway Arch Tram Ride
After watching the Monument To The Dream movie, it was time for us to head to the top of the Arch as we’d managed to pick timed tickets one after another.
As mentioned in the facts section earlier, there are two trams – one on the north side and one on the south. Our tickets were for the north side; it’s clearly signposted which side is which. We then headed down a corridor where we waited for our group to be moved forward.
Boarding passes are numbered which correspond to the tram car you’ll be in. Ours were for tram car four.
When you first arrive at the visitor center, there’s an example of the tram cars next to the ticket desk. This allows you to see what they’re like and sit inside one ahead of time. There are five seats inside and it’s very cozy inside, so someone suffering from claustrophobia might not like the experience if there ends up being four other people in the car with you.
Once it was time for our group’s time slot to head up, we were called forward to stand on a numbered area corresponding to our tram car number.
We all then lined up in front of the doors for our respective tram car numbers. The front section of the stairs you wait on is kept clear for people disembarking the tram after their journey down.
Once the people who’d just journeyed down got off, it was time for us to enter our tram car.
Shae and I were fortunate because it was only the two of us in the tram car.
Something fun we learned about the tram cars is that the system was designed by someone who didn’t have a college degree in engineering. An exhibit in the museum at the Gateway Arch explained it further:
As he planned the Gateway Arch, architect Eero Saarinen envisioned a “sky ride” to take visitors to the top. But no one knew how to accomplish the task. The Saarinen firm turned to a second-generation elevator man with experience in designing auto lifts for parking garages, Dick Bowser. Because his education at the University of Maryland was ended by Navy Service in World War II, Bowser did not have a college degree.
Given two weeks to come up with a concept, Bowser rose to the challenge. He considered a series of elevators, escalators and a Ferris wheel arrangement before settling on a series of barrel-shaped capsules strung together like a train and running on tracks. His initial concept was the one accepted for the Arch, and is essentially the same design still in use today.
The escalator element is because there are eight tram cars that travel together in a similar way to how escalators work. It has an elevator element because the tram cars are lifted and lowered in a similar way to an elevator. As for the Ferris wheel, that part of the design came in because the tram cars rock back and forth a little as you go up and down so that they stay upright rather than rotating as you go up and down. That last point could be a little disconcerting if you didn’t know it was going to happen, but the tour guide explained that before we started our journey up the Arch.
The journey up takes four minutes and you travel at 3.86 mph. Once at the top, we exited our tram car and headed up a few steps to the left.
At the top of the Gateway Arch there are windows on both sides you can look at, along with information boards giving details about what you can see on that side. There are also a couple of tour guides who can answer any questions you might have.
On the eastern side you look out over the Mississippi River towards Illinois.
On the western side of the Arch you get a great view of downtown St Louis, with the Old Courthouse immediately in front of you. .
If you look off to the left you can see Busch Stadium which is where the St Louis Cardinals play baseball.
Depending on the time of day that you visit, lean further forward towards the viewing windows as you might see the Arch’s shadow on the ground.
The top of the Arch has a barrier along the middle. People who go up on the north tram are on one side, while those who travel up on the south tram are on the other side. It doesn’t affect your viewing experience as you get exactly the same views, but it helps them ensure that everyone ends up traveling back down on the tram they’re supposed to be on rather than them hanging around at the top for longer than their allotted time.
The photo below was taken as the people on the south tram were about to head down and it helps give a sense as to the floor’s curve at the top.
You only get 10 minutes at the top of the Arch, so be sure to take all the photos you want. Something you won’t see at the top is the President of the United States –Â that’s because they’re forbidden from going to the top of the Arch due to concerns about security while they’re up there.
After our 10 minutes were up, our tour guide let us know it was time to head back towards the tram car station. We lined up on the left side next to the same tram car number we’d traveled up in.
The travel time on the way up is four minutes. Gravity means the journey back down goes faster, so heading back to the ground only takes three minutes.
Here’s a great video that Shae put together where you get to experience some of what it’s like visiting Gateway Arch National Park and riding up in a tram car.
Final Thoughts
The Gateway Arch in St Louis, MO is a magnificent piece of engineering. It’s a beautiful structure that made us smile every time we saw it while visiting the city. The fact that you can go up inside makes it an even more impressive feat of engineering that’s well worth visiting.
Thanks for sharing