Union Station Hotel
Completed in 1894 and designated as an ASCE Historic Landmark, the Congress host hotel is rich in engineering history and serves as the tour's starting point. In the early 1900s, Union Station was the hub of passenger railroad traffic in the central United States. It was one of the first stations to serve as a centralized terminal for multiple railroad lines. It originally served 22 rail lines; 13 from the east and nine from the west.The station's train shed, 700 feet long and 606 feet wide, used the longest metal roof trusses ever constructed to span 32 sets of tracks. Structural engineer George H. Pegram served as the chief design engineer for the project and used a patented configuration of his own design, known as the Pegram truss. Union Station offered travelers a rich visual experience. Gilded ribs highlight the barrel-vaulted ceiling in the large, main waiting room; a stained glass window shows scenes of San Francisco, St. Louis, and New York; a great clock tower ascends 232 feet. The station ceased operating as an active train terminal in 1978, and reopened in 1985 as the largest adaptive re-use project in the United States, providing shopping, dining, entertainment, and hotel accommodations.
AT+T Center
Just five feet taller than the tallest building in St. Louis, the AT+T center is the second tallest in the city at 588 feet and 44 stories. It is, however, the largest building in St. Louis in floor area at 1.4M square feet - and currently completely vacant since AT+T moved 4500 employees to other facilities in 2014. Constructed in 1986, it was the tallest building in St. Louis until 1989, when One Metropolitan Square - the fourth stop on the tour - was completed. It is five feet shorter than the Gateway Arch!
Wainwright Building
Designated as a National Historic Landmark, the Wainwright Building was designed by the famed architects Adler and Sullivan in 1891, and is considered to be the "father of the contemporary skyscraper". The Wainwright building is credited for being the first successful utilization of steel frame construction in an era of load-bearing masonry walls, which allowed for spacious interiors for the office occupants. The first two floors are faced in brown sandstone, and the next seven stories rise in continuous brick piers. Terra cotta panels of ornate foliage relief's decorate the each floor. The tenth story is a frieze of intertwined leaf scrolls framing circular windows, and is capped with Sullivan's characteristic overhanging roof slab. The building became a St. Louis City Landmark in 1972.
One Metropolitan Square
Completed in 1989, this building is the tallest in St. Louis and the second tallest in Missouri at 593 feet in 42 stories. HOK was previously headquarted in this building, for which they also served as project architect.
Old Courthouse
Old Courthouse was built in the Federal style and completed in 1828. It was the tallest habitable building in St. Louis from 1864 to 1894 until Union Station was constructed, and is now part of Gateway Arch National Park. It was designed by the firm of Lavielle and Morton, which also designed the Old Cathedral, the next stop on the tour. Lavielle and Morton was the first architecture firm west of the Mississippi River above New Orleans. As street commissioner in 1823–26, Joseph Laveille devised the city's street name grid, with ordinal numbers for north-south streets and arboreal names for east-west streets.In 1861, the original cupola was replaced by a wrought and cast iron dome with a copper exterior, modeled on St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. The US Capitol, constructed at the same time during the US Civil War, was also modeled on the Basilica. Four lunettes display paintings by Carl Wimer, portraying St. Louis history. In this same year, the last slave auction occurred in this building, near the East Door.The first two trials of the famous Dred Scott case were held in this courthouse, as was the trial of Virginia Minor in 1872. When Minor attempted to vote in a St. Louis election, she was arrested. During her trial, the US Supreme Court upheld the male-only voting rules.
Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (Old Cathedral)
The structure of Old Cathedral was completed in 1834, and is 136 feet long and 84 feet wide, with a height of 40'. The exterior stone facade and the four columns that support the Doric style portico are carved from Joliet stone mined near Joliet, Illinois. It is a prominent example of Greek Revival architecture in the United States. The portico is crowned with a pediment engraved in the center with large gilded Hebrew characters that signify the name of God. Above the pediment rises a belfry which is twenty feet square in plan and forty feet high. It is constructed of polished stone and ornamented with two rows of pilasters and cornices. The octagonal steeple is forty-five feet high and is topped with a gilded brass ball and cross. The Cathedral was the site of the baptism of explorer William Clark's five children and Sacagawea's son. The cathedral is open until 6 PM every Sunday, and opens at 6:30 AM on weekdays. Step inside to observe the interiors!
Gateway Arch
What engineering icon's image is more closely associated with its place than the St. Louis Gateway Arch? The Gateway Arch is the nation's tallest monument (630 feet tall) , and is 75 feet taller than the Washington Monument and over twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. In 1947, architect Eero Saarinen's winning competition entry conceived the Arch in stainless steel. Saarinen asked structural engineer Fred Severud to study its feasibility from the structural engineering point of view, demonstrating the need for joining the skills of more than one discipline in order to create a project of this magnitude.The stainless-steel-faced Arch spans 630 feet between the outer faces of its triangular legs at the ground level, and its top soars 630 feet into the sky. It takes the shape of an inverted catenary curve.Each leg is a symmetric triangle with sides 54 feet long at ground level, narrowing to 17 feet at the top. The legs have double walls of steel 3 feet apart at ground level and 7-3/4 inches apart above the 400-foot level. Up to the 300-foot mark, the space between the walls is filled with reinforced concrete. Beyond that point, steel stiffeners are used.The double-walled triangular sections were placed on top of one another and then welded inside and out to build the legs of the Arch. Sections ranged in height from 12 feet at the base to 8 feet for the two keystone sections. The Arch has no interior structural frame - its inner and outer steel skins joined to form a composite structure and give it its strength and permanence.
Eads Bridge
Eads Bridge was completed in 1874 in the decade following the Civil War, when the Mississippi River had begun to lose its standing as the primary transport artery in the Midwest. Railroads were taking over, and Chicago was rapidly becoming the center of Midwestern commerce. The Eads Bridge was the first major railroad link over the Mississippi, constructed by the city of St. Louis in an attempt to maintain its dominance as a regional commercial hub.The bridge's designer and builder, James Buchanan Eads, faced unbelievable challenges: political and financial wrangles; shipwrecks, ice storms, and tornadoes; and 14 men dead from caisson disease (also known as decompression sickness, or the "bends".) Seven years and 7 million dollars after construction began, the bridge opened, carrying fifteen 50-ton locomotives loaded with coal, water, and daredevil passengers. The bridge continues to carry traffic across the Mississippi River today.
Busch Stadium
Busch Stadium is the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, and has a seating capacity of 44,494. Opened in April 2006, it replaced Busch Memorial Stadium which partially occupied the current stadium's footprint. The stadium was designed by Populous (formally HOK Sport), its style is "retro-classic" field, and features a view of the St. Louis skyline.
Robert A. Young Federal Building
Featured on the cover of the January 2020 edition of Civil Engineering magazine, this 90 year-old, one million square foot concrete-framed structure covers a 3-acre site. Deemed vulnerable to seismic activity due to its location within 150 miles of two seismic zones (the Wabash Valley and New Madrid faults), its current occupants, the US General Services Administration, proposed a seismic renovation to provide its 3000 daily occupants with "both shelter in place opportunities during, and safe exiting from the building, following a seismic event." Thornton Tomasetti provided the structural engineering analysis and design for this $75M project, and utilized a non-traditional solution for the strengthening of the existing lateral system. Rather than inserting concrete shear walls throughout the height of the existing structure, which would require significant disruption of the daily operations of the occupied building, the team utilized shear walls in the basement level only, and chevron frames incorporating fluid viscous seismic dampers with hydraulic pistons that move during a seismic event. The piston within the damper moves and compresses the fluid, counterbalancing the energy created when the floors would start to move. More details of this project can be found online in the digital edition of Civil Engineering Magazine.
End of Tour - Union Station Hotel
You've completed the full loop! Congratulations and thank you for participating in the inaugural tour of structural engineering marvels in our host city. Please provide feedback via the app so that we can continue to improve! Enjoy the rest of the Congress.
