This Michigan Man Designed the St. Louis Arch

St. Louis — The 600-foot gleaming Gateway Arch defines this city’s downtown. There’s a museum underneath it that examines westward expansion, and you can ride to the top in small tram cars.

But what most people don’t know is that Gateway Arch was designed by prominent designer and visionary Eero Saarinen, a lifelong Michigander who was raised in Bloomfield Hills.

Saarinen was born in Finland but followed his father to Metro Detroit in the early 1920s. His father, Eliel, also an architect, designed Cranbrook’s campus and taught there, eventually becoming president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Eero Saarinen followed in his father’s footsteps as a designer and architect. He helped his father design the General Motors Tech Center in Warren throughout the 1940s and ‘50s.

Eero Saarinen created the iconic midcentury modern tulip chair and table in 1956 when new materials and allowed modernist visionaries to reshape everything from dinnertime to downtowns.

Saarinen actualized grand designs at buildings across the country, including the Kresge Auditorium at MIT, Ingalls Rink at Yale, and the Dulles International Airport.

He also played a key role in the design of the Sydney Opera House in 1956. He was on the design competition jury and hated all the designs, so he looked in the discarded entries and discovered the now-iconic design form by Danish architect Jørn Utzon.

He also designed the 491-foot CBS headquarters building in New York City, completed in 1965. It was the only skyscraper that he designed.

But the most striking of all his creations is the 50-story arch that towers over Missouri and Illinois. You can see it from the suburbs, and it dominates the downtown. No building in St. Louis can be taller than it’s height of 630 feet.

The tram ride to the top is exhilarating, and the museum in the basement level offers respite from the heat and a chance for weary travelers to stretch their legs and learn about westward expansion.

St. Louis natives are proud of The Gateway Arch. It wouldn’t have existed without a Michigander and the specific brand of modernism that was cultivated in the pleasant peninsula.

After his father’s death, he created Eero Saarinen and Associates. He worked alongside other modernists in the state, including Minoru Yamasaki and Albert Kahn, to shape design and architecture tastes worldwide.

Saarinen entered his vision for the arch in a competition, which beat out other submitted designs. His father had also submitted a design to the competition and was unfortunately led to believe his design had won, when it was really his son who’d be able to bring his big idea to life.

Those who worked with Saarinen said it was arduous—often requiring long hours. But they also said the innovative and collaborative environment was exciting.

Unfortunately, Saarinen died relatively young at 51. He underwent surgery at the University of Michigan for a brain tumor and died in the operating room.

You can find a monument to Saarinen in White Chapel Cemetery in Troy, where his father Eliel is also buried.

But it is in St. Louis where Saarinen is perhaps best memorialized by the striking glint of the sun on steel, the towering defiance of gravity and the effective force of his designs.

St. Louis can claim his arch, but Michigan will always have Eero Saarinen.