The Making of an Icon: The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch

The Gateway Arch is one of America's most distinctive and beloved national monuments. Much has been written about the Arch, but no book has captured the legend, lore, and spirit behind its conception and construction, until now. The Making of an Icon:The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch compiles well-known, and rare, stories about the visionaries, finaglers, protesters, and fearless-but-skilled hands involved in an incredible undertaking that courted as much controversy as it did enthusiasm. The dreamers included the architect Eero Saarinen, who spent fourteen years tweaking his design for a Gateway Arch but never lived to see it built. Topping the list of schemers was Democratic Mayor Bernard Dickmann, who threatened to throw Missouri to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Republican opponent if the president wouldn t provide money for Smith's memorial. That was left to intrepid workers who walked without lanyards hundreds of feet above the ground. Today, 2.5 million visit the Gateway Arch every year, and more than 100,000 motorists view the 63-story monument daily from miles away and up close. Many already comprehend its symbolic meaning and physical beauty. The Making of An Icon helps us appreciate the relentless pursuit, innovation, and toil that made the Arch happen.

Growing up in suburban St. Louis, Author and Journalist Jim Merkel went on numerous Sunday afternoon drives with his family to watch the construction of the Gateway Arch. His two previous books for Reedy Press are Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch: St. Louis's South Side; and Beer, Brats, and Baseball: St. Louis Germans. He and his wife Lorraine live in South St. Louis, twenty minutes from the Arch.