Saint Louis, MO Photo - Close-up View of The Gateway Arch, The Symbolic Gateway to The West

Close-up view of the Gateway Arch, the symbolic gateway to the West (although there's a great deal of Midwest to go before the West is reached) and the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Designed by Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel, the stainless-stel arch opened to the public on June 10, 1967. At 630 feet, it is the tallest manmade monument in the United States. The cross-sections of the arch's legs are equilateral triangles, narrowing from 54 feet per side at the bases to 17 feet (per side at the top. Each wall consists of a stainless steel skin covering a sandwich of two carbon-steel walls with reinforced concrete in the middle from ground level to 300 feet , with carbon steel to the peak. The arch is hollow to accommodate a tram system that takes visitors to an observation deck at the top.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.