Monumental Folly: The proposed memorial to President Eisenhower becomes even less appealing

City Journal ^ | May 26, 2017 | Catesby Leigh

[iowamark]

If you’re looking for a textbook example of the Washington swamp Donald Trump vowed to drain, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Memorial, designed by celebrity architect Frank Gehry and soon to be erected in the capital’s monumental core, has plenty to offer: the dubious memorial competition Gehry won, the incompetent sponsoring commission’s reliance on federal largesse rather than private donations, and pervasive official cluelessness about Gehry’s ill-conceived, very expensive, and very unpopular design. His over-scaled $150 million theme park is a self-indulgent travesty of a tribute to the D-Day commander and 34th president. To be situated across Independence Avenue from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, the memorial will feature an enormous billboard—a stainless-steel decorated screen the architect calls a “tapestry”—that rises as high as the Lincoln Memorial and is well over twice as wide. Humility is not Gehry’s long suit. And it is odd, to put it mildly, that an architect internationally renowned for attention-grabbing structures that look like they’re dissolving or collapsing should have been chosen to design a presidential memorial.

Gehry’s design appeared doomed until last summer, when Ike’s four grandchildren abandoned their longstanding opposition—repeatedly cited by congressional opponents in denying the project construction funding—in exchange for alterations that, inconceivably, make it even worse. Congress has now provided $45 million in addition to the more than $65 million previously appropriated, and the Trump administration is on board, no matter that Gehry likened the president-elect’s oratory to Hitler’s late last year. The alterations have raised hackles among previously pliable review board members, delaying the final official approvals that the congressionally established Eisenhower Memorial Commission needs before it can break ground. The memorial’s recently anticipated completion date of June 6, 2019—D-Day’s 75th anniversary—is probably out of reach. But it’s going to get built.

In reversing themselves, Ike’s grandchildren turned their backs on the family consensus that his memorial should be “as simple as possible,” as their late father, the military historian and diplomat John S.D. Eisenhower, put it. Gehry’s design is anything but simple: attached to six cylindrical posts 11 feet in diameter, the openwork screen is the stage-set backdrop to the four-acre memorial site, which will also harbor realistic sculpture. The screen is 447 feet wide and rises 80 feet above the ground, and was originally to be threaded with a photograph-derived landscape of Ike’s native Abilene, Kansas. But the grandchildren, whose spokeswoman is Washington consultant Susan Eisenhower, liked neither the screen, which she dubbed an “Iron Curtain,” nor the emphasis on Ike’s rustic roots. During negotiations with memorial commission advisor James A. Baker, the former secretary of state, Eisenhower changed her position, agreeing to the screen’s inclusion, on the condition that it displayed a postwar peacetime vista of the Normandy coast that was the scene of the D-Day landings, instead of the Kansas prairie...

[iowamark]

Entire article at City Journal: Monumental Folly

Mr. Trump and Congress should be ashamed of themselves for approving this waste.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Can we build a few hundred miles of the wall?

[Kickass Conservative]

Build a hundred foot tall Golf Club and be done with it.

[Yaelle]

Eisenhower was our first black President and didn’t get any credit. If Obama got credit for being black when his genes were only 50%, Ike with 25% should have gotten some black cred too!

[fella]

Ike started the Civil Rights Movement that was high-jacked and perverted by LBJ.

[FrdmLvr]

Dedicate that section to Ike.

[Pollster1]

I like Ike, but that cost is way too high. How about a nice statue?

[sphinx]

The overarching issue is the deconstruction of the Mall. Washington’s formal design is mostly neo-classical. The Mall is no exception. The Smithsonian does have the Castle and the Arts and Industries Building, red brick Victorian structures that play well with their neighbors. Modernism, however, is slowly eroding the harmony of design. In my opinion, this started in the 1960’s with the National Museum of American History, which is ugly in the utterly characteristic 1960’s architectural fashion. It’s been downhill since then. The most recent museums clash architecturally with their surroundings. Too much — memorials as well as monuments — is being crammed into an already overbuilt space. The powers that be seem intent on destroying classical unity of design in favor of a collage of deliberately discordant elements.

[Soul of the South]

“The overarching issue is the deconstruction of the Mall”

There is no need to honor every president with a memorial costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Our country was founded on the principles of individual liberty and equality of opportunity. The goal was a classless society, not one in which some men (and women) are more equal than others. Let’s return to the concept of the citizen servant in government. Serve for a limited time, leave office with honor, and return to your home community to gradually fade away.

Building and maintaining monuments and libraries to ex presidents, at taxpayer expense, is insanity for a nation with a crumbling infrastructure and $20 trillion in debt. If private money can’t fund these activities, they should be scrapped.

[PAR35]

Gehry has one basic design that he keeps re-using, and it is arrogant, ugly and dangerous. I’m not sure why anyone would hire him to design a doghouse.

[sphinx]

There is no need to honor every president with a memorial costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

I agree, although Eisenhower is overdue. What is now the Kennedy Center was supposed to be an Eisenhower memorial project. The planning and fundraising was all done during the Eisenhower years. JFK's only "contribution" was getting killed when he did. The Democrats then went on their orgy of renaming everything in sight for JFK. The musical arts palace on the Potomac was nearing completion at that time and got swept up in the wave. They did leave an Eisenhower Theater in the Kennedy Center as a nod to the original concept.

I believe that was all built with private funds.

[Stosh]

If forced, I’d be hard-pressed to choose which of Gehry’s creations is the ugliest; whatever he slaps together in DC will serve only to diminish the beauty of the iconic structures there that help define our heritage.

[nicollo]

Excellent posts, and I agree.

A simple statue of Ike would be perfect. Imagine if Gehry, who is more interested in his own legacy than Ike's, had designed the Jefferson or Lincoln memorials? And isn't Gehry the idiot who nearly ruined the Corcoran?

This project is so "emotive" as to be entirely devoid of meaning -- which is what post-modernism is all about. All you need to know about it is what the ComPost "cultural critic" has to say (from Wikipedia):

"Gehry has produced a design that inverts several of the sacred hierarchies of the classical memorial, emphasizing ideas of domesticity and interiority rather than masculine power and external display. He has 're-gendered' the vocabulary of memorialization, giving it new life and vitality."

[insert pukey-face emoticon here].

For an antidote see "Monumental Egos" from American Spectator, as well as the protest site: www.eisenhowermemorial.net/.

By contrast, the Grant memorial at the base of the Capitol appropriately celebrates the man and the men who served the nation with him. The project became a bit more than a simple statue and was controversial in its day, but not because its design represented the artist more than the subject. I like it, but the reflecting pool has isolated it and rendered it invisible to most visitors.

Speaking of: do you know of any plans to redo Union Square? Oh, I hate that ugly puddle: it serves not as a reflection on the greatness of Congress but as a physical reminder of how removed Congress is today from the American people.

[sphinx]

I have not heard of any plans to redo Union Square. The Grant Memorial is one of the best pieces of public art anywhere; the central figure of Grant is just ok, but the flanking elements are superb. I like the pool, though it could be somewhat smaller.

The bigger problem is that the area is dominated by parking. I am looking forward to a new regime in Congress -- I don't care which party -- that simply dispenses with all the permit-only, on-street reserved parking around the Capitol complex. There are enough underground spaces for all Members and Senators, with a lot to spare for very senior staff. The rest of congressional staffers can pay for commercial parking, take metro, or walk or bike to work. Most, in fact, already do this; the on-street permit-only parking does create additional reserved space, but not nearly enough to put more than a small dent in the problem. Get rid of it and landscape the freed space appropriately.

I understand that the Smithsonian is considering scrapping the Haupt Gardens in front of the Castle, replacing the formal, 19th century gardens (perfect in that space) with a more open, lawn-like landscaping designed to accommodate expanded underground space. Bad idea all around. This is what happens when an institution does a top-down review, with expensive architects and landscape designers who think they have to recommend dramatic changes in order to justify their price tags. You end up with change for the sake of change, with excellent and much-loved historical solutions being thrown away simply because some hired gun wants to "make his mark."

[generally]

I’m completely against taxpayer funding of memorials to ANY person (with the exception of the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier, which is not a specific person).

If people or groups want to raise funds for stuff like this, fine, but don’t ask taxpayers to pay for it. These are nothing more than crony capitalist payments to already rich “artists”.

I’m against idolatry in all its forms. I have great respect and appreciation for many leaders, including Eisenhower, but I don’t worship them or need monuments to them.

[nicollo]

I’d enjoy the Haupt Gardens if they’d allow dogs... instead my pups and I walk from Independence to the Mall through the pathway between the Arts & Industries building and the Hirshhorn. It’s actually quite lovely.

To my mind the only space that needs improvement along the Mall is Constitution Gardens (well, that and destroying the awful WWII Memorial...). But of course they’d turn it into some post-modern monstrosity if given the chance.