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NCPC Advances Plans for Washington Monument Guard Rails
By Arlo Wagner The National Capital Planning Commission yesterday advanced plans for landscaping the closed space on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, constructing a guard rail around the Washington Monument and building memorial benches for the 184 victims of the attack on the Pentagon. ... (Robert Hershey, president of the D.C. Society of Professional Engineers) described the Washington Monument as "the safest place in town," explaining that its walls are 15 feet thick, compared with the 2-foot walls of the Pentagon, where 184 persons, ages 3 to 71, died when it was hit by a hijacked airliner September 11. The proposed 30-inch barrier wall with adjoining sidewalk in a circle 400 feet from the monument would interfere with visitors to the Mall and, along with other landscaping plans, violates the Commemorative Works Act signed in 1986 by President Reagan, said Judy Scott Feldman, chairman of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall. The barrier wall ostensibly would block bomb-carrying vehicles from driving into the monument. Although the commission was not considering other plans, four speakers protested a security proposal to build a 60-foot entrance building east of the Washington Monument that would lead tourists to a 500-foot tunnel before reaching the elevators to take them to the top. "I feel it is unacceptable that for the rest of the history of this country, its people will have to go underground to feel secure,"said Dorothy Miller, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 1. "A tunnel is just ridiculous," said Don Hawkins, officer of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City. The plans approved by the commission yesterday include nothing about openings from the tunnel for escape to the surface of the Mall, which certainly would affect the landscape, Mrs. Feldman said. Mr. Hershey called the tunnel "a crypt," where a suicidal terrorist could collect tourists as victims for his mission. |
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