Sprinkled across the lands of our sprawling country are national parks and monuments that celebrate and memorialize our history. Fantastically large and well-known (such as Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty) or small and overlooked (your local war memorials), these monuments, and any accompanying museums, each have a distinct subject, purpose or intention.
When these structures become aged and crumbling, in need of repair, the ensuing restorations are often closely scrutinized by government bodies and the public alike – with the restoration often designed by the winner of a design competition.
In St. Louis, Missouri, that city’s Gateway Archwas designed by Eero Saarinen to commemorate the United States’ westward expansion and was completed in 1965. In 2010, the New York-based architecture and urban design firm Cooper Robertsonearned the opportunity to help lead the restoration of the Gateway Arch, its museum and the surrounding park.
The competition, “Framing a Modern Masterpiece: The City + The Arch + The River”, was organized by the non-profit Gateway Arch Park Foundation and concluded with a $96 million Museum as the cultural centerpiece of the overall $380 million comprehensive renewal of the Gateway Arch National Park.
Cooper Robertson began work on the project in 2010, completing an almost nine-year design, development and construction process.
“Located at the base of Eero Saarinen’s iconic Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, within a National Park, the underground Museum explores seminal events in American history, such as President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark’s exploration of North America in 1804, and the role of St. Louis in the settlement of the American West,” notes the Cooper Robertson project description. “The Museum had suffered from a lack of visibility and was in need of a more relevant and contemporary narrative about the westward expansion of the United States.
“As a work of great monumental public art, Saarinen’s Arch is imbued with meaning, technological achievement, and beauty that must be compared with the most important American icons, like the Statue of Liberty. However, with the construction of the adjacent interstate highway, the setting of the Arch had diminished its potential to inspire ideas and emotions about relevant historical topics like migration and scientific exploration. The design of the new Museum and surrounding landscape has more fully realized that potential through an ambitious but respectful intervention that interprets the spirit of the Arch and amplifies its relevance to our time.”
The expansion project reflects a conscious adjustment to the museum’s intent and focus; the previous museum focused on the American West in general, rather than the significance of St. Louis in the country’s westward expansion.
“The Arch is really there to commemorate the westward expansion of the United States,” said Scott Newman, partner and head of the cultural and educational practice at Cooper Robertson. St. Louis was the edge of the frontier – the westernmost city of the States at the time, and many explorations and trails began there. It’s about scientific exploration, westward emmigration, the search for a new home. All of these stories and experiences are told in the new museum.
“The Arch is on the same scale as the Statue of Liberty, and most people generally know what the Statue of Liberty stands for and what it means. But many people don’t know the meaning of the Arch in the way they know the Statue of Liberty.”
The design team set about developing solutions for several distinct design problems.
First and foremost, they wanted to improve the overall visitor experience, making it comfortable, welcoming and inclusive. With an average of 2.5 – 4 million visitors each year, often lining up outside in the hot sun and waiting to pass through high-level security, the experience was not a pleasant one.
As part of that goal, the museum’s entrance and exit, and the flow of people through the park was to be reimagined. In addition to providing a better connection between the Arch and downtown St. Louis, by way of a new land bridge, the improved park experience would engage people in new museum’s exhibits and strengthen the connection between the Arch and the museum for a more integrated experience.
With the museum facility entirely submerged underground and entrances built as hidden ramps at the base of the Arch, the project presented rare challenges to the design team.
“The facility was completely underground and very, very hard to find,” Mr. Newman noted. “We had to figure out how to bring people down to it, and then how to move people back up as they leave. It’s also a historic national landmark, so we couldn’t make many major changes. We treated the architecture and landscape as one in terms of design. It’s very beautiful, but it’s very unusual to have a building totally integrated into the landscape.”
The design teams also wanted to improve the experiences and content within the exhibits. The museum was last fitted out with exhibits in 1976, and those exhibits were located off to the side and did not come across as a big part of the visitor experience.
The Museum Experience
The new Museum occupies a renovated underground space built concurrently with the Arch with a 47,000 square foot expansion to the west, and a new entrance facing the Old Courthouse, site of the landmark 1857 trial of the slave Dred Scott, notes the project description. “The majority of the interior of the existing space was demolished and reconfigured into new galleries, public amenities, and museum staff offices. The original architectural elements of the existing public spaces were preserved, and their distinctive character highlighted with new lighting and other discrete interventions. The addition houses a new public lobby that also serves as a kind of visitor center for the entire Park, as well as a great hall with monumental and animated elements that introduce the visitor to major themes to be explored in the galleries.”
“The Museum design is fully integrated into the National Register-listed landscape and respects Dan Kiley’s original Park design. The new circular stainless steel and glass entrance refers to the Arch in its materiality and form. It is an arc laid on to the landscape and precisely inserted into the topography, allowing visitors to enter the building through the landscape rather than descending underground. As one enters, the luminous great hall is revealed with views deep into the underground Museum’s monumentally scaled exhibits, elevating and enlivening the visitor experience, and drawing one in.
A giant map of North America floats below the entry hall. Visitors and school groups can land there and walk the path of Lewis and Clark, or follow the trails of pioneers migrating west. The map is also designed as a unique space for special events. Beneath the map is a new Education Center that supports the Park’s programs which previously had no dedicated space.
“One moves down through the hall among screens projecting life sized videos of wagon trains journeying west across an open and rugged landscape with bison and other natural features of the frontier, creating a vivid experience of the migration before entering the galleries.
“The linear exhibition offers various ways to navigate multiple stories on single and successive visits, and merges seamlessly with the trip up the Arch, and then delivers one at its base to experience the great work itself. The design creates a coherent and memorable visit by integrating the Museum content with the Arch.”
Once inside the lobby, guests can find a visitor services center for the entire park – a new feature. Security, which previously resembled the front-and-center style of an airport, is now located off to the side, invisible to the public. And wayfinding was made more intuitive, so that guests no longer question where to head next.
Universal Design Standards
The Museum is fully accessible for all ages and all abilities,” the Cooper Robertson project description notes. “The Museum expansion, exhibits, and Arch grounds have been designed to utilize the core principles of Universal Design, which are founded on equal or equivalent means of use for all visitors and staff, and exceeds the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)…“These guidelines have been instrumental in creating an environment which is as simple and intuitive to use as possible, while also drastically reducing physical and attitudinal barriers to all users.”
Universal Design standards, which the National Park Service required the project to comply with, are different and more rigorous than ADA standards, and the primary goal is to not separate people with disabilities from other visitors.
“We gathered together a group of people with disabilities that we worked really closely with to develop 
the museum experience,” said Mr. Newman. “We did things like build special tactile models for blind people to be able to experience the museum, but we also made things more practical all-around – how you navigate the space is the same for people with and without apparent disabilities.”
The design team includes Cooper Robertson, with the glass entrance by James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA). The museum sits within a new landscape designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA). Cooper Robertson’s project description articulates the power of a successful public restoration project and its positive effects on the surrounding city.
“This project demonstrates that excellent museum architecture, great monumental public art, and well-designed outdoor public spaces can make great cities. It is a key component of the larger plan to connect downtown St. Louis with the Park and the Mississippi Riverfront as the underground Museum expands towards downtown and opens onto a redesigned public square that now spans over a sunken interstate highway. The new Museum and Old Courthouse create an ensemble of buildings of national significance that define a transformed public open space in downtown St. Louis. Taken together with the Arch, this will become a new destination for those interested in architecture and history, contribute to the quality of urban life for residents, and drive economic revitalization.”