St. Louis Gateway Mall Informations

The Gateway Mall in St. Louis, Missouri is an open green space running linearly, one block wide, from the Gateway Arch at Memorial Drive to Union Station at 20th Street. Located in the city's downtown, it runs between Market Street and Chestnut Street.

In the early 21st century, there are plans to remodel areas of the mall for additional uses and to make it more attractive to visitors. City planners hope to incorporate the many downtown locations into one mall area.

The Mall began as part of the Comprehensive Plan of 1907, which embraced City Beautiful principles held by members of the City Plan Commission. That plan originally called for the removal of buildings between 13th and 14th streets from Clark north to Olive streets to form a new park mall. This did not take place, and different players pushed the similar Central Traffic-Parkway plan in 1912. This intended to clear buildings between Tucker and Jefferson in a one-block-wide trip between Market and Chestnut streets. A later phase of the project would have extended the mall as far as Grand Avenue. It had the support of Mayor Henry Kiel, but in a 1915 referendum on the plan, voters defeated it.

The City Plan Commission published another downtown plan in 1919. The Public Building Plan called for the clearing of buildings for a park space between 12th and 14th streets. The first section between 12th and 13th would extend from Market north to Olive by the Central Library. The second, between 13th and 14th, would be between Market and Chestnut. This was approved by voters in 1923 with an $87 million bond to support acquisition and demolition of properties for certain spaces.

In 1939, as part of the Gateway Arch National Park (then known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial), a park was built with the aid of federal funds during the Great Depression between 3rd and 4th streets between Market and Chestnut.

In 1940, the city commissioned Carl Milles to design a fountain, The Meeting of the Waters, on Aloe Plaza in front of Union Station.

In the 1950s, city leaders completed the park blocks between 15th and 18th streets.

In 1965, voters approved a $2 million bond issue to build Kiener Plaza on the block between Broadway and 6th street. In 1966, voters defeated a demolition plan to extend the mall to Kiener Plaza, but the city moved forward. It secured one block between 10th and 11th streets, demolished the buildings and developed the park space in 1976. It proved unpopular, and the block was redesignated as the site of Richard Serra’s sculpture Twain .

In 1982, mayor Vincent Schoemehl announced a public-private partnership called the Pride Redevelopment Corporation. The Pride plan was to remove the remaining buildings in the mall and construct smaller five-story buildings on the northern halves of each block to anchor park spaces on the southern halves. Three large historic office buildings, the Title Guarantee, Buder and International buildings, were pulled down by the end of 1984. During the two years that followed, a group of smaller historic buildings, known as Real Estate Row, were demolished, although all had been designated by the National Park Service as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Only one half-block office building was constructed, the 15-story Gateway One. The building was criticized as demonstrating the very qualities it was created to replace. Its height obstructed the view of the Arch, which was supposed to be highlighted along the Mall. In addition, its mass made the section of the mall on its block seem private and inaccessible.

In 1992, Schoemehl promised to complete the Mall before he left office. In 1994, his administration cleared the two blocks between 8th and 10th streets for the mall, in the process removing the landmark Western Union Building.

A Master Plan was commissioned for the mall in 2007 by mayor Francis Slay. It defined the mall as a series of outside 'rooms' and promoted design of a unifying "hallway" to run along the southern edge of the mall. Each room was to serve a function related to the buildings adjacent to it. Next to the Serra sculpture, a sculpture park was called for. Next to the Library, City Hall, and the Civil Courts Building, a civic room to hold public events was recommended. Next to the Plaza Square apartment complex, a neighborhood room with family facilities was needed. At the end by Union Station, planners recommended a feature that would indicate the end of the Mall, so a terminus section was designated. These rooms were intended to interact with each other and the buildings beside them.

Citygarden, the sculpture park "room," opened in 2009 to great acclaim. It was one of the rooms called for in the Mall's master plan. Following this, a conservancy group was formed to maintain the mall, help raise money for this purpose, and carry out the rest of the objectives of the master plan.

The Luther Ely Smith Square is controlled by the National Park Service, and is located directly between the Arch Grounds and the Old Courthouse. It is named after Luther Ely Smith, who organized the design competition for a landmark that resulted in selection of Saarinen's design for the Arch.

Memorial Drive, which runs along Interstate 70 between the Gateway Mall and the Gateway Arch, has often been cited by locals as having a pedestrian access problem. The current landscaping of the Smith Square, which focuses on symmetry, draws pedestrians to its edges away from its interior. It has been designated by the National Park Service as an orientation area. Under plans for renewal of the Arch area, the accessibility issue was corrected.

As winners of the 2009 international Framing a Modern Masterpiece design contest, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates re-imagined Luther Ely Smith Square extending to form a park over Interstate 70, physically connecting the Arch grounds to the city of St. Louis for the first time. In November 2015, this plan was brought to fruition with completion of the first component of the CityArchRiver project.

To the north is the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront hotel. To the south are the Drury Plaza Hotel and KMOV-TV.

The Old St. Louis County Courthouse was a combination federal and state courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri that was Missouri's tallest habitable building from 1864 to 1894. It is now part of the Gateway Arch National Park.

Land for the courthouse was donated in 1816 by Judge John Baptiste Charles Lucas and St. Louis founder René Auguste Chouteau Lucas and Chouteau required the land be "used forever as the site on which the courthouse of the County of St. Louis should be erected." The Federal style courthouse was completed in 1828.

The courthouse was abandoned in 1930 by the county courts when the Civil Courts Building was built. Descendants of Chouteau and Lucas sued to regain ownership. In 1935, during the Great Depression, St. Louis voted a bond issue to raze nearly 40 blocks around the courthouse in the center of St. Louis for the new Gateway Arch National Park, which was then known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in an Executive Order the area would be a national monument. The courthouse formally became part of the new monument area in 1940.

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