Incredibly beautiful area, and, accordingly, very sad to view from the present. As cool as the Arch is, and as much as it distinguished St. Louis for the better, it's hard for me to think that all of the destruction that made way for it was worth it. Well, that's hind-sight for you, and you know what "they" say...
I wonder, though, if they used the building of the Arch as an excuse to proceed with such large-scale destruction of an existing urban environment; the implicit intentions would probably tell an interesting story. I know one thing, though: if that area were still intact today with the Arch framing all of its dense, urban glory...
