A landscaped green corridor laid like a lid across a sunken interstate, knitting downtown back to its riverfront after decades of separation by a canyon of traffic. The square carries the name of Luther Ely Smith, the civic booster who in 1933 first pitched a grand riverfront memorial and the straight visual axis that ties the historic courthouse to a monument not yet imagined. Stand at its center and the view resolves in both directions: dome to the west, steel to the east, exactly aligned. Flowerbeds, lawn, and a broad walkway make this the threshold between the old city and the Arch grounds proper. It is a short, level crossing and a fine spot to take in the engineered sightline.
You're standing on a roof. Not a building's — a highway's. Underneath this lawn, Interstate forty-four and seventy run in a trench, and the green you're crossing is a landscaped lid laid right over the top of them. For decades that sunken highway cut this riverfront clean off from downtown — the Arch on one side, the old city on the other, and a canyon of traffic in between. This lid stitched the two back together.
Now put it to use. Look west, and the Old Courthouse stands squarely at the end of the lawn, its dome dead center. Turn east, and the Arch rises right behind you — the courthouse at one end, the steel at the other, lined up dead straight. The alignment is no accident. This whole green corridor carries the name of Luther Ely Smith, the St. Louis civic leader who, back in nineteen thirty-three and the teeth of the Depression, dreamed up a riverfront memorial — and the sightline that would tie the old courthouse, this mall, and a monument yet to come into one straight axis. Years later, Eero Saarinen shaped his Arch to anchor that very line.
So take the breather here. The whole park runs only about ninety-one acres — the smallest national park in the country, small enough to cross on foot — yet every paved path was laid to point your eye somewhere. From this spot, both directions land on something worth a long look. Then we step east, off the lid, and onto the Arch grounds themselves.
Photo: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, NPS · CC BY 2.0
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