WWII Memorial Draws Fresh Criticism

Arguing that a proposed World War II memorial would have “serious and unresolved adverse effects” on the character of the National Mall, a key historical preservation group has urged Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to reconsider the structure’s current design.

With groundbreaking ceremonies already in the works for early November, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has told Babbitt in a letter that the planned memorial would “violate the open feeling of the Mall and intrude upon the uncluttered historic vistas” that stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

The National Park Service, under Babbitt, is under no obligation to accept the advisory council’s recommendation. But the letter is a serious blow to the controversial undertaking, becoming what one monument critic, District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, called “the first entity to break the lock step of approval.”

Moreover, the recommendation focuses on how the proposed memorial would affect the aesthetic integrity of the Mall, a key concern of the National Park Service, which recently has recommended against any future additions to the Mall that would alter or damage the Lincoln Memorial grounds.

The recommendation comes just two weeks before the World War II memorial is to face its final hurdle--approval or disapproval by the 12-member National Capital Planning Commission.

The 20-member advisory council said it “has accepted that it is possible to design” a memorial appropriate to the site. But the proposed design of Rhode Island architect Friedrich St. Florian--a sunken plaza ringed by a pair of soaring arches and 56 marble columns--is definitely not it, the panel asserted.

In bureaucratic language that scarcely blunted a broadside, the council wrote that the “overall scale and complexity” of St. Florian’s design clashes with the “transcendent symbolic significance and fundamental simplicity” of the National Mall, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 and Marian Anderson, barred from Constitution Hall, sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” in 1939.

Cathryn B. Slater of Little Rock, Ark., who was appointed by President Clinton to chair the advisory council, recently called the proposed site “perfect.”

In its letter to Babbitt, the council castigated the park service for its failure to consult its members earlier in the process of siting and designing the World War II memorial and others so that there “can be meaningful consideration of alternatives.” The World War II project has come in for criticism for skirting a number of procedural requirements--from environmental impact studies to assessments of traffic and visitor effects to early public disclosure of design and siting criteria.

On Wednesday, Norton called on Babbitt to act on his commitment, stated in a 1997 letter, “to ensure that no unacceptable impact to the historic properties occurs as a result of the project.” Calling the council’s decision “principled,” Norton said it “gives us significant hope that a fitting memorial and site still can be achieved.”

The advisory council’s letter to Babbitt adds to a growing chorus of criticism of the monument’s proposed design and its appropriateness for a spot between the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument. The council singled out “several existing features, and other features yet to take form,” as “particularly problematic.”

It objected to the “visual screen of 56 ornamented pillars,” which it suggested would clutter up a space whose openness has “enabled it to serve as truly common ground for all Americans.” Nighttime lighting would “further magnify the memorial as a newly introduced element,” the panel also complained. And a sculpture now envisioned in the middle of the sunken plaza could disrupt the currently clean line that flows from the Capitol to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.

“It is of utmost importance that the National World War II Memorial complement and not compete with the Mall’s transcendent historic and cultural values, and that the Mall remain genuinely the common ground that it has been historically,” the letter concludes. “In that spirit, we urge reconsideration of the current memorial design to preserve the distinctive character of this national treasure.”