St. Louis Official Visitors Guide 2009 - (Page 36) ARCHITECTURE tour Grand Basin and Saint Louis Art Museum St. Louis Union Station C harming St. Louis was the last bastion of Eastern “civilization” on the frontier, built on a base of French and Spanish sensibilities and accented with generations of wealth earned from America’s westward expansion. Get acquainted with its distinctive look during a quick architecture tour of these top 10 stops: 1. The Gateway Arch, built in 1965 as a monument to President Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a continental United States, soars 630 feet high as the focal point of St. Louis’ skyline. Eero Saarinen designed the monument’s stainless-steel exterior. Across the street, the Old Courthouse, built in stages from 1839 to 1862, boasts America’s first cast iron dome. The French-inspired 1834 Old Cathedral (Basilica St. Louis King), located on the Arch grounds, survived the great fire of 1849 to reign over the city. 36 The Official St. Louis Visitors Guide 2. North of the Arch, the Laclede’s Landing entertainment district lures visitors into its restored warehousesturned-clubs and restaurants. The buildings’ decorative cast iron and brick fronts reflect seldom-preserved commercial architectural styles from the mid-1800s. 3. The stately Eads Bridge—the first ever constructed with steel trusses— opened in 1874. Its builder, James Buchanan Eads, invented the first diving bell to salvage the river’s steamboat wrecks and used the technology to sink the solid bridge’s support structures down to bedrock beneath the river. 4. St. Louis Union Station is a National Historic Landmark and its massive train shed alone is a work of architectural and engineering art. Note the use of light in the elaborate Grand Hall and don’t miss the famous Whispering Arch. Designed to resemble a French fortress by archiw w w. e x p l o r e s t l o u i s . c o m GAIL MOONEY DAN DONOVAN W ith an architectural profile rivaling that of any city in the world, see how St. Louis was built to last. http://www.explorestlouis.com
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