Museum at the Gateway Arch: Subterranean sensation
Date Posted: November 14, 2019
Posted In: News,
From Building Design+Construction: Located at the base of the Gateway Arch, this underground museum explores seminal events in American history, such as the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. The 46,000-sf addition and 100,000-sf renovation represented the facility’s first reconstruction work since the Museum of Westward Expansion opened in 1976.
The project team had to work mostly below ground and within the National Register–listed landscape. The Mississippi River flooded twice during construction.
The team traveled to Germany to review and approve the glass fabricator’s mockup of the canopy enclosure system for the new 2,000-sf west entrance. A reinforced cast-in-place post-tensioned concrete lid beam and slab system spans 80 feet over the museum addition.
Alper Audi and McCarthy Building Companies co-developed a concrete mockup with sensors that enabled the team to make sure that temperatures achieved during curing were within recommended tolerances for the 2,400 cubic yards of concrete that were used.