Best Place to View the Gateway Arch

If you've ever visited the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis, you may have tried to take a photo of it, only to discover, like millions of photographers before you, that the Arch is a little too big to fit in the frame of any camera. Try as you might, there's no decent way to get a snapshot of the Arch with visitors posed right next to it.

The Arch is a deceptively huge monument. It's a whopping 630 feet tall and the distance between each leg is also 630 feet. You could easily tuck two football fields under the mammoth legs!

If you don't want to take home photos of only half the monument or odd photos of your family and friends lined up against a stainless steel wall, there's another option.

The Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park is on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River from the Arch. It's main function is to provide visitors with an excellent view of the St. Louis skyline. The park has a 43 foot tall concrete viewing platform with ramps to the top that visitors can easily climb. The viewing platform is free, as is park admission.

The park also has a geyser fountain which is the tallest man made freshwater fountain in the world, according to the Metro East Park and Recreation District. Known as the Gateway Geyser, the fountain runs from April through October and fires a fountain of water as tall as the Arch itself four times a day.

The park is named after Malcolm Martin, who was a St. Louis lawyer and philanthropist with a dream of building a companion park on the Illinois side so people could properly view the Arch. The idea was part of the original plan of architect Eero Saarinen, who designed the Arch.

Martin organized the Gateway Center of Metropolitan St. Louis in 1987 to raise funds and build the Illinois park. The park became his life's work, and he used some of his own money to purchase land. He died in 2004, before the platform was completed, but his final gift of $5 million dollars saw the project completed. A statue of Martin sits on the top of the platform, gazing fondly at the view he wanted everyone else to have.

The park can be easily accessed by the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi and is located right next door to the Casino Queen. The park has 24 park security, but it is only open to visitors from dawn to dusk, or until 10pm in winter months. Click here for a current listing of hours and a map of the Malcolm Martin Memorial Park.

Sources: Metro East Park and Recreation Division, Who is Malcolm Martin?