St. Louis Landmarks Recreated With Stain on Gym Floor

Courtesy Washington University

The gym floor inside Washington University's rec center is an ode to surrounding St. Louis. Stained in two tones across the finger-jointed maple court's 21,000 square feet are three city icons—the 1904 World's Fair building, now Brookings Hall; The Francis Field gates, the entrance to the 1904 Summer Olympics; and the Gateway Arch. "It was discussed as a joke or a dream at first," says Alex Verseman of St. Louis-based Missouri Floor Company. But the university was serious, and Versemen went to work. Missouri Floor designed an arch that, at 129 feet tall and 129 feet wide, was a 1:5 scale model of the real arch. Missouri Floor used two stain colors, Nutmeg and Spice Brown, to make them appear three-dimensional. The project took seven weeks, from putting the vapor barrier down to pulling the oil-modified polyurethane finish with a gravity-fed T-bar applicator, and the crew's nerves were on edge as the project approached completion. With a project of this size, they couldn't help being attached to it, and there were many people from the university to please. "But everyone, hands down, loved it," Verseman says. "It was a very fulfilling feeling."