Posts about Memorials

Indeed, the best and most beautiful, the most serene and the most magnificent, become the backdrop for the most sacred traditions and the most meaningful displays of civic duty.

What American could imagine Martin Luther King's famous speech being given from any other place than from the grand steps of the Lincoln Memorial? Would the words, "I have a dream" have carried the same magnitude and awe to inspire generations had they been spoken before a bland glass box of a federal building?

It is in our best memorials that the loftiness of the architecture not only provides a fitting setting, but also serves to emphasize the greatest ideals to which we aspire as citizens.

The Eisenhower Memorial which Gehry has proposed, pictured below, emphasizes none of the ideals of one of our nation's great heroes, but reduces Eisenhower's accomplishment to the level of the mundane.

Massive unadorned pillars serve not to inspire wonder, but rather to make one feel miniscule and inconsequential. Sheets of metal, strung up like drive-in movie screens between the enormous pillars communicate not the universal ideals of unity, sacrifice and freedom, but rather random moments picked from the President's life.

In contrast, designs chosen by the NCAS and the ICA&A and created by architects and artisans were chosen because they express through meaningful sculpture, beautiful composition and a deference to the city, as well as the civic virtues that Eisenhower himself exemplified.

The first place winner, Daniel Cook, stated that his winning design, pictured at the top of this post, was designed not as an arch celebrating the victory of a conqueror, but rather an arch of peace. The transition Cook reflects of Eisenhower as a general to Eisenhower as president and citizen evokes memories of Washington as Cincinnatus, the revered leader who laid aside his power and returned to his farm when his work was complete.

Sylvester Bartos and Whitley Esteban's second place design, pictured right, presented an arch framing the axis of Maryland Avenue, with semicircular colonnades facing the dome of the Capitol, surrounding a figure of Eisenhower. In front of this design one might contemplate the weight of responsibility faced as he pondered the invasion the night before D-Day in 1944.

Each design awarded was classical by design, but each was unique. Some chose to place Eisenhower high atop a pedestal, others placed him in a temple. In each we can see the limitless expressive capability of architecture when the designers cast off the limits of the modernist idiom. What all of the designs had in common was that they created a fitting place to honor and remember a man who exemplifies the best of what America has to offer.

Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of the President, in her remarks at the award ceremony stated that she could we could imagine this becoming a setting that every year future generations would gather to remember, as we did on Monday, the sacrifice of so many brave men on D-Day. That more than just a memorial to one man, that this place could become as the Lincoln Memorial has become, a sacred place to honor the civic virtue which we all aspire.

Below are the winners of the counterproposal competition:

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place (a tie)

2 commendations

Taylor, 24, was in his fourth year with the Redskins. In the twelfth week of the 2007 season he had 5 interceptions—third in the league, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. His reputation as one of the hardest hitting players in the league and his all-out style of play had endeared him to fans.

News of his death during a home invasion on November 27, 2007 quickly spread across the region, leaving his teammates and fans in a state of disbelief and grief. While the Redskins organization honored Taylor's memory on the field, an established DC graffiti artist took to the red line in a public display of deference.

"The Red Line has been a hot spot since the mid-80's, but became the spot in the early 90's," according to Roger Gastman, a Bethesda native and author of Free Agents: A History of DC Graffiti and the forthcoming The History of American Graffiti. "If you wanted to be someone in the DC graffiti scene, you had to hit the Red Line."

"The Brookland station, you can walk right up to it. It is a very good location, if you can pull it off," says Gastman.

"The best writers interact with their environment," asserts Gastman, citing graffiti as the fastest growing art movement of the past forty years.

CERT

Beginning his graffiti career with the tag of "CERT" in 1992 at the age of 14, the well-known writer of the Sean Taylor mural declined an interview request for this article.

"The Red Line was CERT's backyard. He basically lived there and owned it. CERT could disappear, but, to this day he holds enough respect that his spots will remain untouched for years to come," reads CERT's profile in Free Agents that describes his graffiti as "hardcore and illegal" and "always in highly visible spots."

"Graffiti to me is my childhood, my teen years. That's what I was about 100 percent. But I'm still representing. Don't count me out. Don't forget me. I can come back at any moment and in a month I'll take king of the Red Line again," contends CERT in the 2001 book.

"Whatever his reasons for slowing down, CERT is a true D.C. king. It's time for him to sit back and let the mark he left on the city soak in. And like he said, don't count him out. With a closet full of paint and heart that's true to the game, CERT will be back," Gastman foretold in the conclusion of CERT's profile.

The mural has remained untouched since its appearance more than 3 years ago. Gastman says there is a code among writers that is being followed.

"Brookland station can be considered a museum for DC graffiti, because of the pieces that have endured over the years," says Saaret Yoseph, a graduate student at Georgetown University. "Brookland is unique in that the art is eye level. The graffiti is looking right at you as you wait for your train."

Yoseph is directing, "The Red Line D.C Project," a documentary exploring the "communal experience" of graffiti on the Red Line as a public art space. It will be released later this year.

Rider Reactions

"What struck me about that one was here was a memorial to someone we actually knew—or knew of. So much graffiti is inscrutable. Who are the people named there? What's the purpose of it? But this was one we could grasp immediately," said John Kelly, a writer for The Washington Post and Red Line rider since 1983. "And then a few years later, just across the platform was another one that fell into that category: some memorial paint for Michael Jackson."

On a recent morning at the Brookland Station, riders' reactions to the graffiti suggested a sense of pride in the station's distinction as the home of the Sean Taylor mural.

"If they cleaned it up we would be really hurt behind that one," said Milford Obendorf, a Brookland resident waiting with his wife on the northbound train to Silver Spring.

"It's been here since he passed away. People come here to look at it," said Marquette Obendorf.

"It's real creative," said LaWanda Swain, a custodian with Metro for 6 years. "He played here so they have respect for him."

"It spices things up. If they cleaned it up then you'd be staring at a wall for 15 minutes," said Mike Young, 20, a cell phone sales rep downtown. "People remember Sean Taylor because he shouldn't have died. He hit the hardest like when he cracked yungin' in the Pro Bowl."

Numerous videos on YouTube have compiled Taylor's highlights as a Redskin, including a tackle of punter Brian Moorman in the Pro Bowl that lifted Moorman off his feet to a point where he was parallel to the field.

However, some riders expressed frustration with the station's illegal art.

"It grows and grows until they clean it up," said Joe, an older man in a white dress shirt, a Brookland resident for more than two decades. "The kids that do it are talented, but they can put their talents to better use."

As a regular rider of the red line for more than a decade, I can remember the walls at Brookland being cleaned, "buffed" in the language of graffiti, about five years ago.

"The graffiti is on CSX property, not Metro property. Typically, when we become aware of graffiti, our goal is to remove it within 24 hours," said Angela Gates, a Media Relations officer with Metro.

CSX did not respond to email and phone call requests for comment.

"There have been no graffiti-related arrests or citations in the last year at Brookland-CUA," said Gates who emphasized that the property is outside of Metro's jurisdiction.

With no apparent plans to clean the walls and a lack of enforcement around graffiti, the Sean Taylor mural will continue to be a distinctive cultural landmark for the Brookland Metro station.

A print version of this article will appear in the forthcoming spring edition of The Brookland Heartbeat.

The cylinders do more than any other element to make the memorial visually striking from a distance, and so are indispensable to the design, but at 80 feet tall and lacking any details whatsoever they will be too bare up close. Like the lackluster inner plaza, the cylinders are a missed opportunity for sculpture. If I were the designer I might go classical, but Gehry could propose something like bareiss columns and that would be just as good.

I also have mixed feelings about the other major element of the memorial, the metal tapestries. I appreciate and agree with the desire to cover up the Education Department building, but to do so with oversized picture panels is a touch contrived, a little too easy. It's like we've taken the tarps that are supposed to hide the parking garages at Nationals Ballpark and turned them into a monument. It's a difficult problem, but is that *really* the best we can do?

Gehry deserves credit for restraining himself from retreading his own familiar shtick. Another mass of crumbled titanium would have been inappropriate; it would be memorial to Gehry himself more so than Eisenhower. But at the same time I have to say I'm disappointed that there's nothing daring in this proposal. Such rare opportunities for artful civic sculpture shouldn't be ignored. This memorial could be worse, but it could also be a lot better.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The street condition is undefined, bounded by the tapestries except at three prominent areas. The axis of Maryland Avenue cuts through the memorial, with the stone ring in the center. Building the memorial without disrupting the viewshed of the Capitol or traffic flow were seen as the two big problems. The Memorial Commission selected a design that sidesteps the issue of sightlines by removing one of eight columns and two sections of the screens. This way, the design frames the primary view of the Capitol with the same structures that fit it into the grid.

The panel rejected other alternatives that maintained a vehicular Maryland Avenue road through the monument. Instead, they chose to create a pedestrian plaza. The site, adjacent to the Mall, tries to moves the monumental program off of the Mall and drawing visitors, most of whom tour on foot.

Gehry has tamed his own style for this project, although the ring of stones exemplifies the blockish forms he had been experimenting with since the opening of Walt Disney Hall. Mercifully, Gehry has also eschewed the dismal expressionism of a younger generation of memorial designers. The design team did not try to assign tremendous meaning to every little detail. Instead, it is a building that can be judged for its power and for its beauty, although people will disagree.

Last year, the Post's architecture critic Philip Kennicott called for a new "language" of memorialization. Gehry partly delivers, but the project also contains overt references to the neoclassical precedents around DC. The memorial succeeds because of them, even as it inverts some and adds a few new details.

The large screens are the most novel idea of the entire memorial. They expand the sculptural program to a gigantic scale, reaching eighty feet into the air. During the daytime, the might shade the interior space. At night the model shows them lit from the courtyard, more clearly revealing the content to Independence Avenue.

Gehry revisits some older ideas as well. Although the Mall hasn't seen memorial trees in a century, they once formed a good part of the commemorative landscape and this monument contains one as the centerpiece of the ring of rectangular monoliths.

On the faces of each block, reliefs will relate significant moments of in the career of the soldier and president. Relief sculpture has been less popular as part of DC's monumental landscape. In no other memorial is it the primary form of representation. The models show large images extending to the edges of each block, almost like a digital photograph or television image. We do not want to be trapped by our technology, but the gesture toward on-screen representation does seem fresh. However, fifteen years later, the once-exotic etchings on the Korean War Veterans Memorial feel thin and inexpressive. Now, the media are moving into 3-D for its effect, so this design follows the trend back into tradition.

If the sculptural style looks promising, the columns that support the screens already disappoint. In the model, they appear too much like the dowels used to represent the shafts, and not enough like real pieces of architecture. They are mute and unattractive. Compare them to the colonnade on the Lincoln Memorial, where Henry Bacon emphasized permanence and with the beauty and connotations of the Doric order. At the Eisenhower Memorial, little can be said about the columns because the columns say so little. Gehry may not have made a grand colonnade, but he did design a great rotunda.

The ensemble at the heart of the memorial evokes a humble country life—Mayberry, even. Eisenhower was never a fortunate son; rural life bookended his life and formed his character. Born in Abiline, Kansas, and retiring to a farm in Gettysburg, the great deeds and great words that surround the bucolic centerpiece suggest a practical man thrust into history. This particular relationship is the most powerful image presented by the monument. On another level, planting a landscape at the center of a circular memorial references Jefferson. Even as monuments crumble, the ensemble seems to suggest, the self-sustaining farm life continues Eisenhower's legacy.

The other images will come later, so we do not yet know the style or the artist, or even the content. How these artworks will convey complex achievements like the occupation of Europe or interstate highway system remains uncertain. The Civil Rights Movement, which grew more powerful and accomplished key victories had relatively little to to with Ike. Again, the metaphor of simplicity surrounded by greatness will guide visitors to examine what made the man rather than what the man made.

Before the collectible shovels even hit the ground, this design will come under review by the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission. More importantly, translating the model-driven architecture of Frank Gehry into physical designs will require substantial thought, such as how to humanize those columns. The sculptural program will be contentious as well. Recognizing a man who was a baseball coach, an officer, a college president, General Of the Armies, and President of the United States will be challenging. Gehry and the many agencies that oversee the mall must cooperate to produce the most affecting and communicative architecture possible.

The memorial is trying to be taken seriously. Gehry has said that his own military experience in 1955-1957 motivated him to work on this particular project, and that he holds particular respect for the man who was Commander-in-Chief during that time. Some people will never like Frank Gehry. His cavalier style can feel like an insult to care and effort. Although this is just a cultivated image, this memorial must transcend his style to be recognized as a monument to Eisenhower. Based on what was displayed yesterday, with a little hard work, the monument could be one of Washington's best.

It has a water element, some nice paving, a few benches and a little statue, "The Lone Sailor," to suggest the human element of military service. The memorial's best feature is its humility and its benign incorporation into the cityscape. Any number of second-tier landscape architecture firms could provide more of the same.

Can a memorial "reinvent" while also remaining humble and benign? Gehry is probably not the man to do that, though Kennicott feels he "deserves the freedom to try." However, there's a very fine line between interesting and garish. If our architecture critics keep criticizing good-but-not-spectacular memorials like the Navy memorial as "not very interesting," architects won't even try for humble.

Many architecture schools indoctrinate young architects with the notion that their designs must be bold, stand out, challenge orthodoxy, and make a statement, when in truth most buildings really just need to look nice, function well, relate to people on the human scale, and integrate well into the fabric of the city. But many architecture critics egg them on, pushing the warping of the craft of architecture into a modern art contest. Former New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable did it, Boston Globe critic Yvonne Abraham does it, and it sure sounds like Kennicott is doing it, even if in a small way.

The Eisenhower Memorial should function as a plaza and as a memorial. It might be time to reinvent the language of memorials, but we don't need to reinvent plazas. Memorials have changed over the centuries, becoming different but not better or worse, while plazas have generally become worse. The classic European squares with fountains still work best, while plazas are modernism's greatest failure among many.

If Gehry comes up with a visionary new vision for the Eisenhower Memorial that's a lousy plaza, it'll be a failure. No matter how much architecture critics appreciate its creativity, people have to appreciate sitting there and eating lunch as well. And interesting or not, the Navy Memorial succeeds admirably at the one goal while doing just fine at the other. Something like that from a "second-tier landscape architecture firm" could well do better for the city than what Gehry might devise. He deserves the freedom to try, but the citizens, NCPC, and CFA, which Kennicott calls the "District's design watchdogs," deserve the freedom to tell him to clip his boldness and make a good plaza.