The controversial plan to build a World War II memorial on the National
Mall in Washington took an unexpected turn Monday, as opponents of the
project revealed previously unreleased National Park Service studies showing
that the proposed site is part of the historic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial.
Final design review for the $100-million tribute to veterans of the war is
scheduled for Thursday, when the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts will hold a
public hearing.
The proposed war memorial, designed by Rhode Island architect Friedrich
St. Florian, includes two semi-circles of 56 stone pillars with bronze wreaths
and two 41-foot-high triumphal arches. The pillars and arches would ring a
7.4-acre sunken plaza around an oval fountain on the current site of the
Rainbow Pool, at the east end of the Reflecting Pool, between the Washington
and Lincoln monuments.
The project, sponsored by the federal American Battle Monuments
Commission, has been under consideration by Congress, the Fine Arts
Commission and the National Capital Planning Commission since 1995, with
public review mandated throughout the process. At each stage of the review,
opponents have objected to the memorial on aesthetic grounds as well as its
placement, which they believe destroys the design and impact of the original
relationship between the Lincoln and Washington monuments.
The studies tying the Rainbow Pool to the Lincoln Memorial were
commissioned in 1996 by the National Park Service partly to assist in
decisions about the war memorial design. The Reflecting and Rainbow pools,
the first of the studies says, "are integral components of the designed historic
landscape of the Lincoln Memorial." The second study bolsters that
assessment, citing the Rainbow Pool as an element in the 1981 decision to
place the memorial in the Register of National Historic Places. The studies
were filed with the Park Service in July and August 1999 but were never made
public.
Judy Scott Feldman, chairwoman of the National Coalition to Save Our
Mall, which opposes the war memorial project, obtained copies of the studies
Friday. "The review process has been subverted because it's likely no one but
the Park Service knew the Rainbow Pool was part of the Lincoln Memorial,"
she said. "People would be outraged if they knew."
Based on the study, Feldman said her advocacy group will retain legal
counsel for a possible lawsuit aimed at stopping the project.
Mike Conley, spokesman for the Battle Monuments Commission, said:
"I've never seen that report. We've followed every legal process that has been
required of us." He also expressed surprise that the Rainbow Pool is
considered part of the Lincoln Memorial grounds.
National Park Service spokesman Earl Kittleman said he was unaware of
the two reports.
"Congress authorized the [Rainbow Pool] site," he said. J. Carter Brown,
chairman of the Commission on Fine Arts, expressed skepticism about the
relevance of the studies. "The site has been approved," Brown said. "The pool
is very far away from the Lincoln Memorial. Where do you stop in considering
what's on the grounds? I can't imagine this fantasy is more than a pipe dream."
Feldman charged Monday that the National Park Service had suppressed
the studies because they conflict with an earlier ruling by the Park Service that
a war memorial would have "no adverse effect" if built on the Rainbow Pool
site.
In the newly obtained studies, Feldman said, "The Park Service
recommends that any future addition not alter or damage the Lincoln Memorial
grounds. The current design takes none of this into consideration."
Feldman, an architectural historian and former professor at American
University, said she will make the studies available to the Commission of Fine
Arts before Thursday's hearing.
The Park Service studies trace the history of the Lincoln Memorial, which
was authorized by Congress in 1911 on the recommendation of the McMillan
Commission, convened to complete Pierre L'Enfant's design for Washington.
Construction on the memorial took place from 1914 to 1922. The rectangular
Reflecting Pool and the oval Rainbow Pool were finished the following year.
The first study states that "the conceptual design for the two pools (as well
as the [Lincoln] Memorial) was prepared by McMillan Commission member
Charles F. McKim," of the New York architectural firm McKim, Mead and
White. The Lincoln Memorial was designed by McKim's protege, Henry
Bacon, while the pools and their surrounding lawns and pavements were
designed by Bacon and celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead
Jr.
St. Florian's design for the World War II memorial calls for the Rainbow
Pool to be removed and rebuilt at a scale 15% smaller than originally conceived
by Olmstead and six to seven feet below present grade. A sculptural element,
yet to be determined, is proposed for the center of the pool, and the area
around it will be repaved.
The second Park Service study revealed Monday cites the Lincoln
Memorial grounds, including the Rainbow Pool, as helping to fulfill the
National Register of Historic Places criteria on two counts. First, their formal
symmetrical arrangement "embodies the classicism of the Beaux-Arts style
found in the design of the [Lincoln] Memorial building," and second, "the
Lincoln Memorial grounds have gained national significance in the role they
have played as a forum for racial justice starting in 1939 with the Marian
Anderson concert, into the 1960s providing a backdrop for the civil rights
movement and continuing into the 1990s."
