Jefferson National Expansion Memorial – St. Louis MO

Description

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is a large park along the Mississippi River maintained by the National Park Service. It contains the iconic St. Louis Gateway Arch. The construction of the park lasted for multiple decades. The WPA and the PWA were both involved in demolition and site preparation of the Memorial’s 82-acre site from 1935 through the early 1940s.

The initial need for development of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial with its iconic arch was the clearing of the buildings in the area of the development, saving as much historical information as possible. Additionally, there was the country’s largest “Hooverville” along the Mississippi River which was also cleared at the same time. It was a long process with the arch being completed in 1965. Included is a photo from 1942 after the initial demolition of the land.

“On April 15, [1935] then Governor Guy B. Park signed it into law. Dickmann and Smith applied for funding from two New Deal agencies—the Public Works Administration (headed by Harold Ickes) and the Works Progress Administration (headed by Harry Hopkins). On August 7, both Ickes and Hopkins assented to the funding requests, each promising $10,000,000, and said that the National Park Service (NPS) would manage the memorial. A local bond issue election granting $7.5 million for the memorial’s development was held on September 10 and passed.

On December 21, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7253 to approve the memorial, allocating the 82-acre area as the first National Historic Site. The order also appropriated $3.3 million through the WPA and $3.45 million through the PWA ($6,750,000 in total). The motivation of the project was twofold—commemorating westward expansion and creating jobs. Some taxpayers began to file suits to impede the monument, which they called a “boondoggle”…

Using the 1935 grant of $6.75 million and $2.25 million in city bonds, the NPS acquired the buildings within the historic site—through condemnation rather than purchase—and demolished them. By September 1938, condemnation was complete. The legality of the condemnation was subject to many court cases and culminated on January 27, 1939, when the United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that condemnation was valid. $6.2 million in sum was distributed to land owners on June 14. Demolition commenced on October 10, 1939, when Dickmann extracted three bricks from a vacant warehouse.”   (wikipedia)