November 12, 2007
Dear Coalition Friends:
Today's USA Today reports on the controversy swirling around the proposed Vietnam Veterans Memorial Visitor Center on the Mall and includes comments critical of the project from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Coalition to Save Our Mall, and a veterans' group, Equal Honor for All.
To assess for yourself whether, as proponents claim, the visitor center is "out of sight" as required by Congress, take a moment to review the plans, drawings and view, and the Coalition statement, on our website:
Go to http://www.savethemall.org, right-hand column, "What's New," "Why the controversy over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Visitor Center?" These views demonstrate why Betsy Merritt of the National Trust speaks of a "huge gash."
USA TODAY
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
(The following are excerpts. For the full story go HERE.
WASHINGTON - Jan Scruggs stretches his arms toward the Vietnam Veterans Memorial he imagined and made real 25 years ago. As the names on the wall are read aloud in the distance, he stands on the spot where he plans an underground visitors center as one last tribute to the war's dead.
"This is where the entrance will be," says Scruggs, his back to the nearby Lincoln Memorial. Pointing to a gift shop kiosk nearby, he says, "This is not a historic vista."
That's not how preservationists see it. Like the divisive Vietnam War and the unconventional design of the monument to it, the center is opposed by critics who fear it will mar the already crowded National Mall and overshadow the memorial itself...The 35,000-square-foot space could cost up to $100 million. The memorial cost $8.4 million, or just under $18 million in today's dollars. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has raised $15 million. It hopes to open the center by 2012. Final design details must be approved by local review boards, but the project got a boost last month when the advisory U.S. Commission of Fine Arts granted conditional approval.
'A new way of mourning'
Visitors would descend ramps into the center, which the architect says would not be visible from the wall or the Lincoln Memorial. They would see a large screen of changing photos of the more than 58,000 people whose names are engraved in the black granite wall. Their pictures would appear on their birthdays...
...Across from the faces would be some of the 100,000 objects that have been left at the memorial: dog tags, medals, boots, whiskey, stuffed animals, birthday cards, even a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
The memorial "defined a new way of mourning, leaving things" to recall a lost one, says retired Army general Barry McCaffrey, who has helped raise funds.
Next, visitors would see a timeline of the war and the effort to build the memorial. There would be no photos of such figures as President Nixon or anti-war protests.
"This is not about the politics of the Vietnam War," says Scruggs, 57. "We're teaching citizenship. We're teaching loyalty. We're teaching sacrifice."...
A moratorium on building on the Mall has stymied groups that want a place on the nation's prime memorial grounds. Years of lobbying by Scruggs won an exception from Congress.
Like the Capitol Visitors Center, which is estimated to be a year from completion, and a planned National Law Enforcement Memorial museum here, the new center was required to be built mostly out of sight.
Architect James Polshek says the design adheres to guidelines issued by the National Capital Planning Commission last year. "It is as subtle as anything could be," he says.
Opposition to visitors center
Not so, says Elizabeth Merritt of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She calls the center's entry courtyard "a huge gash," a description that calls to mind Lin's critics. Viewed from some angles, the entrance is "too evocative of the memorial," whose uniqueness should not be overshadowed, Merritt says.
Judy Scott Feldman of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall says the center would set a precedent that would encourage other groups to push for interpretive adjuncts to their monuments. "We are mistaking the power of our memorials with the educational value of our museums."
For Ray Saikus, a Vietnam War veteran from Cleveland, the underground center evokes the tunnels where the Viet Cong hid. "It will be distracting," he says. "It will diminish … the wall, (which) should stand on its own. Nobody should be interpreting anything."
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