memorial, which was a national park service site founded by a presidential proclamation to commemorate st. louis'se in the westward expansion in the united states. so 12 years after the founding of the park, an architectureal competition was held. 40 city blocks were torn down, erased of its original buildings to make way for the memorial on the st. louis river front. each architect who submitted a design proposal would do any he or she wanted. it could be a huge sculpture or anything they wanted it to be. they wanted one central feature. some people put a big kind of monolithic rectangular block or something. he decided to go within an arch and it was only after he designed if arch that he realized it forms a gateway so it is proposal appropriate for st. louis's role as a gateway to have a giantic gateway on the river front. it is made out of stainless steel on the outside and on the inside it is 3.25 carbon steel. so basically you have a sandwich. in the lower portions it is filled in with concrete. in the upper portions it is reinforcing rods that keep the sections apart. it is kind of a unique

st. louis called discovery 2000. i keep john's remarks, because i like to quote from him. and john, similar to steven matthew, talk about leadership. he said in his speech that those places that commemorate or recognize preserve difficult or sad chapters in our history are not places which we are to allow ourselves to wallow in remorse, but rather to be moved to a high resolve to become better citizens. i mean, that's why we have these areas. that is the bottom line when all is said and done. what have these parks motivated us to do as american citizens. that's the bottom line. that's the only reason we have these parks. >> one thing i would add about the question, it's a really interesting question. for me, it's partly linked to the vice of the virtue of the strong bureaucratic culture of the national park service. if you think about some of the structural features of the agency and the way its organizers, outsiders like us need to always keep in mind. one, it is dealing with the challenge of being a organization that has disbursed units that it has to somehow regulate the behavior of those disbursed units in a way that keeps them within kind of certain sideboards. one of the devices th

which was a national park service site founded by a presidential proclamation in 1935 to commemorate st. louis' role in the westward expansion of the united states. so 12 years after the founding of the park, an architectural competition was held to decide what the memorial itself would look like. and basically, they had about 90 acreoffs land to work with. 40 city blocks had been torn down, completely razed of all their original buildings to make way for the memorial of the st. louis riverfront. each architec who submitted a design proposal could really do whatever he or she wanted. it could be a huge sculpture, it could be a series of museum buildings. they did want one central feature to be in each of these designs. some people put an obelisk in. some people put a big kind of monolithic rectangular block or something. saranin decided to go with the idea of an arch. it was only after he kind of designed the arch that he realized, it forms a gateway. so it's really appropriate for the idea of a memorial to st. louis' role in westward expansion. st. louis' role as a gateway to have a gigantic