Full Circle: St. Louis City + Arch + River

Visible for miles, the Gateway Arch is recognized and celebrated around the world for its engineering and sculptural elegance. Like the pyramids at Giza, the Taj Mahal, and the Washington Monument, the Arch is timeless, compelling, and provocative. How can new design preserve, enhance, and extend the identity of this international icon? The Gateway Arch is isolated, separated from the city and river by criss-crossing roadways, highways, bridges, rail lines, and barge traffic. The site suggests a history of transportation in the region that has facilitated the flow of commerce and industry, yet destroyed cultural landmarks, interrupted the region’s ecology, and formed barriers within communities. The limestone bluffs of the river’s edge were destructed to create the levee; the Native American mounds of “Mound City” were destroyed and used for fill in the construction of the railroads; and the regions plains, forests, wetlands, and communities were sliced apart by new roadways and highways. Full Circle capitalizes on the dynamic movement and infrastructures of the site, celebrates the history of trade and transportation that sustained the region for centuries, and proposes a new layer of regenerative infrastructure that recovers ecologies and historical narratives no longer evident on the site. Full Circle’s regenerative infrastructure includes routes that reframe and reorganize the park around an expanded recreational and educational visitor experience. A set of welcoming gateways forge connections between strategic corridors for residential, recreational, commercial, and civic activities in St. Louis and East St. Louis and new settings within the park. The park will leverage existing and planned trails and greenways in the region as multiple uses enhance the vibrancy and layered identities of the park. Full Circle creates a linked sequence of public settings that weave together uses to create an expanded park identity. Linked Landmarks create a bold connection from Kiener Plaza and the Old Courthouse across a landbridge and to an expanded Museum of Westward Expansion. Cultural Canopies connects the renewed Memorial Grounds to an active cultural hub and parking garage that links through Eads Bridge to Laclede’s Landing. New Landmark Territories create new connections from the south end of the park, through the elevated expressways to Chouteau’s Landing. New settings for active recreation link the proposed Chouteau Greenway to a bicycle rental within the park and potential recreational venues in the surrounding area including mini-golf, basketball, and skateboarding. Reciprocal Ecologies create a new educational and cultural landscape on the east bank bringing together a new museum with a dramatic and ecologically layered setting. A new oxbow lake allows walking or kayaking along a meandering route through dramatic new earthen mounds at the core of an educational and ecological landscape. Finally, the New River’s Edge creates a dramatic waterfront setting for recreational and cultural use that will provide a dynamic year-round vantage to view the river as well as a riverboat ferry to provide pleasant and safe passage between two banks. Full Circle establishes a renewed identity for the Arch, the cities of St. Louis and East St. Louis, and most importantly, the Mississippi River, where cultural, recreational, ecological, industrial, and artistic activities are free to overlap and find new intersections. Urban life, infrastructure, and nature are reciprocal conditions that together can transform this extraordinary setting into a new paradigm. Landmark and landscape, city and water, infrastructure and ecology, destination and retreat: the essence and potential of this national park resides in celebrating these multiple histories, identities, and ecologies. By envisioning the riverfront’s cultural ecosystem, Full Circle will become a unique addition to the larger cultural network of the St. Louis region.