the.com/gateway arch
America's tallest monument is a stainless-steel rainbow that sways a foot in the wind.
means The Gateway Arch is a 630-foot stainless-steel monument in St. Louis, Missouri, built to commemorate the westward expansion of the United States.
from The name is plain English doing heavy lifting: "gateway" because St. Louis branded itself the "Gateway to the West," the jumping-off point for pioneers heading into the frontier, and "arch" for the obvious shape — a catenary curve, the same line a hanging chain makes under its own weight, flipped upside down. "Arch" comes through Old French from Latin 'arcus,' meaning a bow or curve, the same root behind 'archer' and 'arc.' The structure was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and completed in the 1960s.
- height
- 630 feet, taller than the Washington Monument
- perfect math
- width equals height, exactly
- tram ride
- egg-shaped pods crawl up the curved legs
- survival odds
- engineers gave it 1-in-1000 risk of collapse
- closing gap
- final piece nearly didn't fit in the heat