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Notes
1 Mayor Lyda Krewson, Twitter, July 3, 2018, https://twitter.com/lydakrewson/status/1014210351490060289?lang=en.
2 Stories from 2018 report the St. Louis City population as 49 percent majority African American. Doug Moore, “Black leaders snubbed during official Gateway Arch ribbon-cutting hold their own,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 6, 2018, https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/black-leaders-snubbed-during-official-gateway-arch-ribbon-cutting-hold/article_3f2a7ae7-74bc-5c6e-ab9a-98a253abcba0.html#tracking-source=home-top-story. Shortly thereafter, the city shifted towards a majority white population. Charles Jaco, “St. Louis is no longer a majority black city. What’s next?” MetroSTL, March 5, 2019, https://metrostl.com/2019/03/05/st-louis-is-no-longer-a-majority-black-city-whats-next/.
3 Tishaura Jones, who became the first Black woman mayor of St. Louis in April, 2021, was a state lawmaker in 2012 when the project was initiated. “…She was a part of helping the state legislature pass a measure that established a tax raising money for Arch renovations.” Ashley Lisenby, “Amid #ArchSoWhite controversy, black officials to hold second ribbon-cutting,” St. Louis Public Radio, July 5, 2018, https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2018-07-05/amid-archsowhite-controversy-black-officials-to-hold-second-ribbon-cutting.
4 Bruce Franks Jr., Twitter, July 3 and 4, 2018, @brucefranksjr.
5 Activist De Nichols wrote in a 2018 blog post that the all-white ribbon cutting was not just “about political and civic leaders of color being included in a photograph” but about “…affirming that the Arch—the icon of our city—is a place for all of us.” I extend this meaning of access and ownership, to consider the importance of—and control of—the narrative itself. De Nichols, “What a Photo Can Reveal about a City,” Noteworthy, July 4, 2018, https://blog.usejournal.com/stlouisarch-b6df9e3f851c.
6 Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).
7 The National Park Service grapples too, with this history. In 2018 alongside the renovations, it changed its official name to the Gateway Arch National Park, from the longstanding Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
8 Personal conversation with Bob Moore, retired National Park Service historian for the Arch, January 29, 2021.
9 “Reimagining the Arch Experience,” Gateway Arch Park Foundation, accessed May, 2021, https://www.archpark.org/foundation/legacy.
10 Doug Moore, “Black leaders snubbed during official Gateway Arch ribbon-cutting hold their own,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 6, 2018, https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/black-leaders-snubbed-during-official-gateway-arch-ribbon-cutting-hold/article_3f2a7ae7-74bc-5c6e-ab9a-98a253abcba0.html#tracking-source=home-top-story.
11 Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York, NY: Liveright, 2017).
12 Alison Gold, “Black St. Louis Corrected Tuesday’s Arch Screwup, Cutting That Ribbon All Over Again,” Riverfront Times, July 6, 2018, https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2018/07/06/black-st-louis-corrected-tuesdays-arch-screwup-cutting-that-ribbon-all-over-again.
13 Elite power structures are the new literal and figural “foundations” of the American city. See for example, the Gateway Arch Park Foundation’s boards, accessed May, 2021, https://www.archpark.org/foundation/boards.
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Patty Heyda
Patty Heyda teaches urban design and architecture at Washington University in St. Louis where she is also affiliate faculty of the American Culture Studies program and the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity. Heyda studies uneven impacts of the political economy on lived space and design in American cities. Her book Rebuilding the American City (Routledge, 2016, co-author D. Gamble), details paradigms and tensions of American urban design and planning in fifteen US cities. Heyda’s Erasure Urbanism, Rebuilding and Unbuilding, and Ferguson Atlas projects map the politics of development and dispossession in St. Louis neighborhoods. Heyda has also worked professionally for Architectures Jean Nouvel in Paris and CKA/NBBJ in Boston. Previously, she has taught at Harvard University and Northeastern University.