This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times.
The Gateway Arch dominates the skyline of downtown St. Louis, its gleaming legs standing as a monument to the nation’s history of exploration and westward expansion.
Centered firmly under those legs is another symbol: the domed Old Courthouse.
After a $27.5 million renovation, the site and its museum are set to reopen May 3.
“It’s a symbol of a lot of different things to different people,” said Jeremy Sweat, the superintendent of Gateway Arch National Park, which includes the courthouse. “We think about it as a symbol of justice and freedom, but for a lot of people in St. Louis, it was also a symbol of that fight that was lost repeatedly.”
Enslaved people were auctioned from its steps, and more than 300 sued for their freedom there including Dred and Harriet Scott, an enslaved couple, in 1846. The Scotts eventually lost their case in the U.S. Supreme Court, starting a national conversation that helped lead to the Civil War.
Virginia Minor and her husband filed suit here in 1873 for her right to vote. They, too, lost at the Supreme Court, but the decision forced suffragists to change their tactics and focus on the state level.
“I think a lot of the story is the more challenging parts of our history,” said Sweat, “those times when we’ve fallen short of our own vision of what this nation should be as a nation, where we provide freedoms for all Americans.”
To this day, the building has served as a backdrop for marches and gatherings, including protests this year against the Trump administration and in support of transgender rights.
Sweat and the National Park Service wouldn’t comment specifically on federal cuts to Gateway Arch National Park.
Ryan McClure, the executive director of the Gateway Arch Park Foundation, the park’s philanthropic partner, confirmed in a statement that the park was “affected by staff cuts, and all open positions have been frozen.”
“At the moment, park staff are doing a phenomenal job to keep operations running as usual,” he continued, “but should staff cuts continue, we at the foundation have real concerns about what that means for the visitor experience, including cuts to operational hours at the park and cutbacks in visitor services.”
The Old Courthouse, built from 1839 to 1862, is one of the oldest buildings in downtown St. Louis. Its dome served as a landmark for steamboat pilots along the Mississippi River, long before the stainless steel-paneled Arch was completed in 1965. The building was last used for court proceedings in 1930, when a new courthouse opened downtown.
In 1943, the National Park Service opened the Old Courthouse as a museum, and many St. Louisans remember it as a place where they once went on a school field trip. Passers-by often didn’t realize they could enter at all. The building closed in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic and stayed closed through the renovations.
Inside, visitors experience arguably one of the nicest vantage points in the city: Under the rotunda, layers of floors and balconies and murals extend high into the dome like a wedding cake.
Pam Sanfilippo, the park’s program manager of museum services and interpretation, can’t wait to bring back school groups — maybe lay out some yoga mats and let students take it all in.
“That’s one of my goals,” she said. “To have kids lay on the floor, look up and just start talking about the history.”
That its initial construction took place over more than 20 years says a lot for its craftsmanship, Sanfilippo said. At the time, the courthouse’s existence lent stability to the city and county, she said: “To say, yes, we have rules and laws and justice here in this place. We aren’t this Wild West free-for-all.”
This is the courthouse’s second major renovation. A new elevator adds accessibility to upstairs courtrooms. A new heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system replaces finicky radiators and window units. Workers added a new fire suppression system and replaced most windows with UV-protective glass.
For a building its size and age, it presented no structural issues or big surprises, said Sondra Rotty, senior vice president of Tarlton Corporation, which oversaw renovations.
“It’s beefy,” she said. “It’s in good shape. It’s amazing.”
Crews laid miles of piping, working around historic millwork and drilling through exterior basement walls of limestone four feet thick and interior walls of brick and plaster that are two feet thick. Throughout the building, which has wings that extend from the rotunda, they posted temporary QR codes that linked workers to floor plans.
“You get turned around really easily in that building,” Rotty said. “We wanted all of the construction workers to know at any given time they could use their phone to see: ‘Oh, here’s where I am.’”
The courthouse includes four renovated museum galleries, which explore the design and history of the building itself, African American life in St. Louis, and a courtroom where groups can hold mock trials and learn about the importance of courts in society.
Another gallery tells a more human story of the Scotts, who were eventually released to another family who formally freed them in 1857. Dred Scott died about 16 months later of tuberculosis.
The renovation also is the final phase of the $380 million CityArchRiver Project, the largest public-private partnership in National Park Service history. The project included renovations to the Gateway Arch grounds and its underground museum, which reopened in 2018, as well as green space that extends from the Arch to the Old Courthouse and into downtown.
“The whole project, I think, has really enhanced the opportunity for people to go back and forth and experience downtown,” said Amy Gilbertson, a principal at Trivers, the architect for the Old Courthouse and the Gateway Arch Museum projects.
The Gateway Arch Park Foundation contributed about $6 million and secured a $2.7 million Missouri Department of Economic Development grant for the Old Courthouse project.
“Downtown must succeed for St. Louis to succeed, and this reopening is part of that,” said McClure of the foundation.
In February, the Gateway Arch Park Foundation announced the redevelopment of the Millennium Hotel site, just south of the Old Courthouse. That building has stood vacant since 2014, and the land will be redeveloped into a residential, commercial and entertainment space.
“There’s concerted efforts by lots of civic organizations in ways that I don’t think we’ve seen in generations, to bring back the core of our city,” McClure said.
Part of the Old Courthouse reopening will be a push to market it as a national park, to encourage people to step inside and learn its stories.
“This is their building,” Sweat said. “They own it. The public should be in here, using it like a museum and cultural institution.”
Less than a week after the grand reopening, in a ceremony under the rotunda, people are scheduled to be naturalized as U.S. citizens.
“This is a symbol that if you continue fighting and continue pushing,” Sweat said, “this is a country where those freedoms can come to fruition.”
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