While the Gateway Arch is America's tallest monument, several buildings, such as New York's Empire State Building (1250 feet) and Chicago's Sears Tower (1454 feet) would loom over the Arch.

The title of "tallest monument" often depends on how you define the term, but the Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India, is the tallest statue/monument in the world, standing at a massive 182 meters (597 feet). If you are looking for the tallest obelisk-style monument, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., holds the record at 169 meters (555 feet). Another major contender is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, which is often classified as a "monumental arch" and stands at 192 meters (630 feet), making it the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere. It is important to distinguish these from "buildings" or "observation towers" like the Burj Khalifa. Monuments are typically structures built specifically to commemorate a person, event, or ideology. While the Statue of Unity is a figurative representation of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Gateway Arch is a symbolic monument to the westward expansion of the United States, and both represent the pinnacle of monumental engineering in their respective categories.