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National Mall "Under Assault," Report Warns

Preservation Group Calls Mall Management "Dysfunctional"

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14, 2002 - The National Mall is under "physical assault" as a result of "dysfunctional" planning and management by Congress, federal agencies, boards and commissions, the National Coalition to Save Our Mall said today.

Judy Scott Feldman, Charles Cassell at News Conference

"Changing the Mall should be as difficult as changing the Constitution," said Judy Scott Feldman, Ph.D., an art historian and the coalition's chair. "Instead, the Mall is basically fair game for any well-connected group that's able to raise a few hundred thousand dollars."

The coalition, which waged a lengthy challenge to the construction of the World War II Memorial, is shifting its attention from the courtroom to the court of public opinion with an expanded public outreach and education program, Feldman said.

"Millions of Americans visit Washington each year but many fail to recognize the cultural and historic significant of the National Mall. To remedy that, we will develop a traveling exhibit that alerts Americans to the threats to the Mall," Feldman said.

"Memorial sprawl on the Mall" is a real and growing problem, Feldman said. Nearly 22 acres of the Mall's open public space has been displaced by recent construction and another 12 acres is threatened by projects now in the planning stages, the coalition said in its first annual "State of the Mall" report.

The tour stops at the Jefferson Pier, center of the Mall's intersecting axes

Besides the World War II Memorial, which is now under construction, three additional projects have been approved and at least eight others have been proposed in Congress.

Perhaps the most urgent immediate threat is the proposed Vietnam Veterans Memorial Education Center, which the group said would set "a potentially disastrous precedent."

"What's next, underground museums at the Korean Veterans, WWII, FDR and the future MLK memorials? If these memorials and other cultural attractions are authorized and constructed, the Mall's open spaces and historic values will be further threatened," the report said.

The coalition's report is highly critical of Congress and the National Park Service. Each routinely circumvents the law to ram through pet projects without regard to environmental consequences or destruction of the historically significant Mall's open spaces, it charged.

"The Mall's open space is an integral part of its design. It is not simply waiting to be filled by marble and granite monuments," Feldman said.

The report criticized the National Park Service's proposed security and crowd control measures, which it said are transforming the Mall's public places into tightly-controlled environments that are contrary to the free and open society the Mall is intended to symbolize.

"The notion of transforming our Monument to Democracy into an 'AmericaWorld' theme park for 'consumers of democracy' is so absurd and abhorrent as to defy description," the report said.

The National Coalition to Save Our Mall (www.savethemall.org) is a national, not-for-profit education and research organization working to preserve the National Mall as the Monument to Democracy it is intended to be. The entire text of its State of the Mall report is available at savethemall.org/reports/stateofmall.pdf.

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