1. In the first of two stages of the competition, those submitting designs were expected to produce a “living memorial” that would represent Jefferson's “vision of greater opportunities for men of all races and creeds,” and to engage in a kind of conflict resolution: to resolve the “conflict existing between the complex needs, purposes, and obligations of those whose interests are, or will be affected by the Memorial development.” In the second stage of the competition, the idea of the “living memorial,” with its connotation of usefulness and involvement in community affairs, was eliminated, and the architectural memorial, now denned as “essentially non-functional,” was upgraded in relative importance (see “Competition: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial,” Progressive Architecture [05 1948]: 51–52Google Scholar; and “Jefferson Memorial Competition Winners,” Architectural Record 103 [04 1948]: 92–93Google Scholar). The best overview of the history of the arch is McCue, George, “The Arch: An Appreciation,” American Institute of Architects Journal 67 (1978): 57–63Google Scholar. Eero Saarinen's career is outlined in Eero Saarinen on His Work, ed. Saarinen, Aline B. (1962; rept. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

2. The arch was often referred to as a parabola and as catenary (the curve described by a cord suspended from fixed points at the ends). In reality, it was somewhere in-between.

3. Excerpts from the “Report of the Jury” are printed in “Jefferson Memorial Competition Winners,” pp. 93–95.Google Scholar

4. “Spirit of St. Louis?” Time 51 (03 1, 1948): 43Google Scholar; “Arch of St. Louis,” Newsweek 31 (03 1, 1948): 73Google Scholar; and Current Biography, 1949, Eero Saarinen entry, p. 542Google Scholar (New York Times quotation).

5. Letter from Clarke, Gilmore D. to Wurster, William W., 02 24, 1948Google Scholar, Eero Saarinen Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (ESJNEM), accession no. G-22, Cranbrook Archives, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, box 1, original in Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives, St. Louis.

6. Clipping, , “St. Louis Arch Likened to '42 Mussolini Plan,” New York Herald Tribune, 02 26, 1948Google Scholar, IN ESJNEM, Accession no. G-22, box 1; and “Arch Argument,” Life 24 (03 8, 1948): 113.Google Scholar

7. Letter from Sereni and Herzfeld, attorneys-at-law, to Eero Saarinen, June 24, 1948, ESJNEM, accession no. G-22, box 1.

8. See note 6 (New York Herald Tribune).

9. “Statement by the Jury of Award on the Winning Design in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Competition,” Exhibit B, ESJNEM, accession no. G-22, box 1.

10. Clipping, , New York Herald TribuneGoogle Scholar, cited in note 6; and clipping, Zakarian, John J., “Arch of Triumph, U.S. Style,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, 12 24, 1972, pp. 4, 7.Google Scholar

11. Statement of January, 1959, quoted in Eero Saarinen on His Work, p. 22.Google Scholar

12. According to the Cranbrook Art Academy Library Accession Books, the library stopped subscribing to Architettura in 1927 (Accession Books, Cranbrook Art Academy Library, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan).

13. Temko, Allan, Eero Saarinen (New York: George Braziller, 1962), p. 16Google Scholar; letter from Eero Saarinen to Astrid Sampe (1949), Eero Saarinen Manuscripts, Correspondence to Astrid Sampe, accession no. G-9, in Cranbrook Archives, box 1.

14. “Arch Argument,” p. 113.Google Scholar

15. Teague, Walter Dorwin, Design This Day: The Technique of Order in the Machine Age (1940; rept. rev. ed., New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949), p. 6Google Scholar. On film noir, see Telotte, J. P., Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).Google Scholar

16. Holden, Arthur C., “New Uses; New Forms,” in Building for Modern Man: A Symposium, ed. Creighton, Thomas H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 8Google Scholar; Gropius, Walter, Scope of Total Architecture (New York: Harper, 1943), p. 182Google Scholar; Saarinen, Eliel, The City: Its Growth. Its Decay. Its Future (New York: Reinhold, 1943), pp. 143–44Google Scholar; and Temko, Allan, Eero Saarinen (New York: George Braziller, 1962), p. 14.Google Scholar

17. Saarinen, , City, p. 144Google Scholar; and Mumford, Lewis, “Municipal Functions and Civic Art,” in From the Ground Up: Observations on Contemporary Architecture, Housing, Highway Building, and Civic Design (New York: Harcourt, Brace, n.d. [ca. 1956]), p. 140Google Scholar. Mumford's original essay was published in the New Yorker magazine in 1953.

18. Saarinen, , City, p. xiGoogle Scholar; and Cederna, Antonio, Mussolini Urbanista: Lo Sventramento di Roma negli anni del consenso [Mussolini Urbanist: The Demolition of Rome in the Years of the Consensus] (Rome: Laterza, 1980), p. ix.Google Scholar

19. Cederna, , Mussolini Urbanista, p. ixGoogle Scholar. The fascists also feared the concentration of workers — the element of the population most resistant to fascist ideology — in the central cities and resolutely tore down their quarters in order to diffuse and decentralize the working-class population. In Italian urban areas undergoing redevelopment, new buildings were often placed in purposeful isolation, and great monuments were strategically located to call attention to the lines dividing the quartiere of one social class from that of another (see Mioni, Alberto, ed., Urbanistica Fascista: Ricerche e saggi sulle cittd e il territorio e sulle politiche urbane in Italia tra le due guerreGoogle Scholar [Fascist Town Planning: Research and Essays on the Cities and the Territory and on Urban Politics in Italy Between the Two Wars] 2d ed. [Milan: Franco Angeli, 1986], pp. 26, 32, 36 41–42).

20. Saarinen, , City, p. 148Google Scholar.

21. Hamlin, Talbot, ed., Forms and functions of Twentieth-Century Architecture, 4 vols., vol. 2, The Principles of Composition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), pp. 110–11Google Scholar; Mundt, Ernest, Art, Form, and Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), p. vGoogle Scholar; and Gropius, , Scope of Total Architecture, p. 182Google Scholar. See also Teague, , Design This Day, pp. 235, 237, 241Google Scholar. The most important expression of these ideas in a political vein is Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949; rept. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962)Google Scholar. On gestalt psychology, see Arnheim, Rudolf, “The Gestalt Theory of Expression,” reprinted in Documents of Gestalt Psychology, ed. Henle, Mary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), pp. 316–17Google Scholar. On the ideology of unity in the international realm, see Willkie, Wendell L., One World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943).Google Scholar

22. Howe, George, “Flowing Space: The Concept of Our Time,”Google Scholar in Creighton, , Building for Modern Man, pp. 165, 166Google Scholar. Campbell, Joseph's The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949)Google Scholar became the basis for a television series some forty years after its initial publication.

23. Quoted in Lane, Barbara Miller, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 89.Google Scholar

24. Gropius, Walter, “In Search of a Common Denominator,”Google Scholar in Creighton, , Building for Modern Man, p. 170.Google Scholar

25. Raskin, Eugene, Architecturally Speaking (n.p.: Reinhold, 1954), pp. 41, 43Google Scholar; and Hamlin, , Principles of Composition, chapter on “Scale,” pp. 101, 104.Google Scholar

26. Hamlin, , Principles of Composition, pp. 110–11Google Scholar; and Gropius, , “Common Denominator,”Google Scholar in Creighton, , Building for Modern Man, p. 170.Google Scholar

27. Saarinen, Eero, “A Tour Through the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial,”Google Scholar ESJNEM, accession no. G-22, box 1, folder 1.

28. See the drawings for the Saarinen entry in “Competition,” pp. 51–59Google Scholar. The photograph is View of unfinished Arch from Old Courthouse (ca. 09 1965)Google Scholar, Prints, Slides and Photographs Collection, Ted Rennison Collection, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives, St. Louis, box 9, page 2; and Saarinen comment at Dickinson College, December 1, 1959, in Eero Saarinen on His Work, p. 5Google Scholar. For Saarinen's view of the gothic cathedral, see Temko, , Eero Saarinen, p. 16.Google Scholar

29. Mundt, , Art, Form, and Civilization, pp. v, 4–5, 170Google Scholar; and Hudnut, Joseph, “Architectural Values,”Google Scholar in Creighton, , Building for Modern Man, p. 94Google Scholar. For other examples of the argument for emotion, see Creighton, , Building for Modern Man, p. ixGoogle Scholar; Hamlin, Talbot, Architecture: An Art for All Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947), p. 255Google Scholar; and Teague, , Design This Day, pp. 185–86, 189Google Scholar. For a compelling indictment of the excesses of rationalism, see Hitchcock, Alfred's film Rope (1950)Google Scholar. On the emotions as a bridge to consensus, see Walter, Ralph, “Concepts of Space and Form,”Google Scholar in Creighton, , Building for Modern Man, pp. 80, 77.Google Scholar

30. Eero Saarinen on His Work, p. 6Google Scholar; see also p. 10.

31. James Agee provided an odd sort of confirmation for this view in “Dedication Day,” a brief piece he wrote in 1945 that describes the dedication of a “fused uranium” arch in Washington, D.C., designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (a representative of architectural rationalism) and commemorating the atomic bomb (see Boyer, Paul, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age [New York: Pantheon, 1985], p. 243).Google Scholar

32. Letter from Eero Saarinen to Astrid Sampe, n.d. (letter 9), Eero Saarinen Manuscripts, accession no. G-9, Correspondence to Astrid Sampe, box 1, file 2, Cranbrook Archives; and letter from Eero Saarinen to Astrid Sampe, November 21, 1952 (letter 2), in Correspondence to Sampe, box 1, file 5.

33. Teague, , Design This Day, p. 13Google Scholar (emotional impact); and Diggins, John P., Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 445–47, 457 (“mechanistic temper”).Google Scholar

34. Conversation with Peter Papademetriou, Buffalo, New York, March 9, 1990; and letter from Eero Saarinen to Astrid Saxnpe, November 21, 1952, Saarinen Manuscripts, accession no. G-9, box 1, file 5, Cranbrook Archives.

35. Segre, Claudio, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. xiiiGoogle Scholar (“authentic fascist”), xii, 177 (“pride in being Italian”), 215, 231. I am grateful to Prof. Andrew Lyttleton of the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies for drawing my attention to the existence of the Balbo arch.

36. Segre, , Italo Balbo, p. 257Google Scholar (“patria”); and Balbo, Italo, La Centuria Alata ([Milan]: A. Mondatori, 1934), p. 381.Google Scholar

37. Segrè, , Italo Balbo, p. 295Google Scholar; Ugo Ojetti (Tantalo), Cose Viste [Things Seen], 1934–1938, vol. 7Google Scholar (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1939), p. 163; and Italia: Meridionale e Insulare-Libia [Italy: Southern and Insular Libya] (Milan: Consociazione Turistica Italiana, 1940), p. 413.Google Scholar

38. Moore, Martin, Fourth Shore: Italy's Mass Colonization of Libya (London: Routledge, 1940), p. 208Google Scholar (“without hesitation”); and Wulfing, Walter, Libia! (Bologna: Capelli, 1943), pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

39. Fausto, Florestano Di, “Visione Mediterranea della Mia Architettura” [The Mediterranean Vision of My Architecture], Libia 1 (12 1937): 18–19.Google Scholar

40. Segrè, , Italo Balbo, pp. 15Google Scholar (“astounded”), 309; and Ojetti, , Cose Viste, vol. 7, p. 164.Google Scholar

41. Ojetti, , Cose Viste, vol. 7, pp. 164–65, 167.Google Scholar

42. On ritual and ceremony, see Kertzer, David I., Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

43. “Arae Philaenorum,” Libia: Rassegna Mensile Illustrate [Libya: Illustrated Monthly Review] 1 (03 1937): 10–11Google Scholar. This journal is available at the Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio, Bologna, Italy.

44. For the spotlighted arch, see “Competition,” p. 59Google Scholar. For the most famous imaginative reconstruction of American manifest destiny, see John Gast's painting Westward the Course of Empire, Harry T. Peters Collection, Library of Congress.

45. Address of George B. Hartzog, Jr., Superintendent of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan St. Louis, June 5, 1961 (italics mine); “The Jefferson Memorial: A Compendium of Relative [sic] Facts to Date,” 07 15, 1949Google Scholar; and Saarinen, , “A Tour Through the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial,”Google Scholar n.d., all in Eero Saarinen Manuscripts, accession no. G-22, Cranbrook Academy Archives, box 1, folder 1, originals in Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Archives.

46. We do not know how much Saarinen knew of the planning for the exposition, or of the arch that was to be its centerpiece. A preliminary report on the exposition, richly illustrated and in English, was printed in the December, 1938 issue of Architettura, a worldly journal whose articles on the 1939 New York World's Fair, Polish architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, and, especially, the new Italian cities, were likely to be of interest to Saarinen (see “L'Esposizione Universale Di Roma, 1942” [Rome Universal Exposition, 1942], special issue of Architettura 17 [12 1938]).Google Scholar

47. “L'Esposizione Universale,” p. 723Google Scholar; and Mariani, Riccardo, E42: Un Progetto per l'“Ordine Nuovo” [E42: A Project for the New Order] (Milan: Edizioni Comunita, 1987), p. 7.Google Scholar

48. Mariani, , E42, pp. 14, 17, 21 (quotations).Google Scholar

49. Mariani, , E42, pp. 32Google Scholar (Mussolini quotation), 31, 81; and Architettura 17, p. 821.Google Scholar

50. Mariani, , E42, pp. 79, 144.Google Scholar

51. Mariani, , E42.Google Scholar

52. An examination of several years of Architettura for the late 1930s and early 1940s revealed only one example of the use of a parabolic arch (see “Giuseppe Capponi, Architetto,” Architettura 17 [1939]Google Scholar, design for a covered market at Pavia).

53. Author's photographs.

54. Notebook, Cassa Di Risparmio di Ravenna [Ravenna Savings Bank] (1937), in author's possession; and Tempo di Uomini, Tempo Di Vivere: I Manifesti Piu Belli dei Magnifici Anni Trenta [A Time for Men, a Time for Living: The Most Beautiful Posters of the Magnificent 1930s] (Rome: Ciarrapico Editore, 1983), illustrations 3, 4, 5, 20, 32, 37.

55. Libia, 2 (05 1938)Google Scholar, hotel advertisement (unpaginated); Tempo di Uomini, Tempo di Morire: Manifesti della Guerra Italiana, 1940–1945 [A Time for Men, a Time for Dying: Posters of the Italian War, 1940–1945] (Rome: Ciarrapico Editore, 1977), poster for Rome 1942 Universal Exposition (unpaginated).

56. Graebner, William, The Engineering of Consent: Democracy and Authority in Twentieth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 98–149.Google Scholar

57. Luce, Henry R., The American Century (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941)Google Scholar. When the United States took the first major step in the construction of the new American empire — the 1947 Marshall Plan — its team of propaganda experts used a stone arch as a marketing device. The European Recovery Plan arch appears on an Italian postcard, in the author's possession. On Marshall Plan propaganda, see Ellwood, David W.'s essay in Ellwood, David, ed., The Marshall Plan Forty Years After: Lessons for the International System Today (Bologna: Bologna Center of The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, 1988), pp. 33–39.Google Scholar

58. Nations and peoples confronted the additional trauma of depression in 1929 with very similar kinds of responses. As John Garraty demonstrated in a 1973 essay, New Deal and Nazi policies toward unemployment, industrial recovery, agriculture and the farmer, and other aspects of the worldwide Great Depression were remarkably alike (see Garraty, John A., “The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression,” American Historical Review 78 [10 1973]: 907–44).CrossRefGoogle Scholar