From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
It will be recalled that what became the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and Gateway Arch began in late 1933 when Luther Ely Smith, a prominent Republican lawyer and civic activist, peered out of a train window at the shabby St. Louis riverfront and decided the city should do better.
One rigged election, one massive land clearance project and one world war later, Mr. Smith had a second idea: The as-yet-unbuilt memorial should have “a central feature, a shaft, a building, an arch, or something which would symbolize American culture and civilization.”
