Free Republic

House report could doom Frank Gehry design After more than a decade of planning and $44 million spent, a proposed memorial for President Dwight D. Eisenhower may never be built. A House Committee on Natural Resources report published last week revealed the extent of the money wasted on the already controversial project. Construction for the Eisenhower memorial has not begun and the proposed design has not been approved, but the Eisenhower Commission, which was established as a staff of 12 in 1999, has already spent tens of millions of dollars on the project. Much of that money has gone to...

...The present Eisenhower Memorial design, by postmodernist Frank Gehry, has virtually nothing to do with the Dwight David Eisenhower of history. Plans call for Ike to be memorialized in sculpture as a barefoot farmboy on the Great Plains: not the great wartime leader; not the soldier-diplomat; not the chief executive of the United States who presided over eight years of peace and prosperity. The Gehry conceit seems both obvious and entirely in tune with the postmodern deconstruction of history: There are no great men; there are no great virtues; there is no great striving; nor is there great accomplishment or...

Melanie Morgan, founder of Move America Forward, the nation’s largest pro-troop organization, led about a dozen conservative activists who protested at the Venice home of Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans at a Saturday afternoon fundraiser for California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. Morgan reports the pro-American protesters, “blocked the entrance of hundreds of wealthy Democrat liberals, including Sally Kellerman and Cindy Asner, ex-wife of Ed Asner.” Protesters laid down on the sidewalk outside the entrance gate where guests had to step over them. Event host Jodie Evans was visibly angry at getting a taste of her own medicine and had...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up. The suit says that MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which was hailed by critics as innovative and eye-catching with its unconventional walls and radical angles. But soon after its completion in spring 2004, the center's outdoor amphitheater...

Sometimes... the most important quality an architect can possess is optimism. For example, it took 12 years for the Jewish Museum I designed in Berlin to finally open to the public. A few hours later it had to close. The date: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. That jarring confluence of events not only predated but also presaged my role in rebuilding ground zero. And the memories of what we went through in Berlin give me confidence that we will succeed in New York as well. When I won the museum competition, Berliners were divided between those who felt my design would...