Whole blog in italic?

by Jasper on Jan 25, 2010 11:53 am  

I'm actually reading that book now. I'm a little confused what the transition from public grounds to public space entails for how we use or interpret memorials.

Also, and maybe he discusses this later in the book, but one of the things that's sort of interesting about DC's commemorative space, on or off the Mall, is how we've come to view a memorial as necessary to remember a person or event. The Vietnam memorial, for instance, virtually necessitated the later Korea and WWII memorials, and makes inevitable some eventual memorial to Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder if this says more about our fear of cultural amnesia than anything else or is simply about interest group competition, of a kind.

by Matt W on Jan 25, 2010 12:43 pm  

Just finished reading Yardley. Am still shaking my head over some of the nonsense that seems to get gets spread around. Talking about the "Republican" character of the "Mall designers" is just bloody idiotic. There was only one Mall designer for the McMillan Plan, and he was 29-30 year old Rick Olmsted, who began his design of Washington some where between 24 and 27 years of age. He could not have been more lower-case "d" democratic! Of George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate, Rick said that he would much rather the money had been spent on books for a public library. And the blather about "Memorial Landscape" leads me to wonder if some one, some where, some how, thinks that the Mall, and by extension, the Potomac Parks (Lincoln, Jefferson, et al) area was intended as a monument graveyard, a monument park? It was not so intended by Olmsted. The Mall and Potomac Parks were intended not for proliferating memorials, but as places for people. The purpose of the Mall and the Potomac Parks were designed by Rick to serve the same purpose nationally and locally, in Washington, as Central Park serves for the people of New York City. The proliferation of HUGE monumental complexes on the grounds that Rick prepared for people, the "everybody-citizen" to enjoy in the simple pursuit of peaceful re-creation of body and soul, is destructive of every value he held and championed. These grounds were intended for the living, not the dead, and certainly not as monuments to the glory of war and destruction. His singular driving motif in life, as also that of his father, was to bring people together, people of varied background, race, profession, wealthy of not, powerful or poor, to sit on a bench and fall into easy conversation with their neighbor while enjoying the shade, whisper of the breeze and chirping of the birds, to share their stories, their hopes, thoughts and dreams, in a non threatening environment, not as competitors, but as neighbors sharing the same safe space, to realize that they have more similarities than not, become friends and enjoy each others company. In other words, they could find common ground and foster community. It is called civilization, and the Olmsted parks (Mall and Potomac Parks included) were meant to be civilizing influences on the citizenry. Where once we swam, sunned, flew kites, played baseball and touch football, and some galloped by in polo, or just strolled, there are now acres of marble and gilt bronze, stone walls to hem us in, and keep us out, where our views of fields, trees and river are forever destroyed. The monuments are not raised in salute to heroism or the actions of our ancestors, rather, they are raised as egotistical monuments to ourselves, those that erect them. It is but a means of each group advocating their particular memorial to say just how much more special they are than the rest of the populace. Bah! Humbug!!!

Sibley Jennings.

by J. L. Sibley Jennings on Jan 26, 2010 1:34 pm  

Re the query about the Washington Monument grounds portion of the "McMillan Plan" remaining umbuilt ... due to lack of funds? No. Money had nothing to do with it. That enormous pile of stone was the one major part of the Rick Olmsted's plan where he had to give way to the taste and power of the two architects also appointed to the commission -- Burnham and McKim. Both Burnham and McKim were old enough to be Rick's grandfathers, and he was still "the kid" even if he was the recognized leader of the landscape architecture profession since his father was incapacitated. The grandiosity came from McKim, primarily. Burnham didn't know enough to design anything like it; he was a business man, an administrator, not a designer or classicist. The bands of marine clay unlaying the Washington Monument site was the deciding factor in not constructing the McKim's monumental excess. The weight of the construction could have disrupted the soils underneath (sort of like silly putty) and the potential for movement, if it had happened, could easily have toppled the Washington Monument. Rick was definitely relieved! There was still a chance for his approach: a simple oval field in which the Washington Monument stood slightly off-center on one axis, and outlined by a forest of full-growth trees. There are two versions of Rick's design, both superb, neither of which has ever been installed. That is a pity. They would have made a spectacular connecting link between Rick's design on the four sides. Sibley Jennings.

by J. L. Sibley Jennings on Jan 26, 2010 2:02 pm