Do we need an ‘Arc de Trump’?

The memo­r­i­al arch pro­posed for Washington, D.C., is being tout­ed as a trib­ute to the semi­quin­cen­ten­ni­al anniver­sary of the United States.

It is noth­ing of the sort. It is a vain­glo­ri­ous mon­u­ment to the great­est ego­ma­ni­a­cal pres­i­dent in the his­to­ry of this coun­try, a paean to his inflat­ed nar­cis­sism. And it is being pre­sent­ed as a trib­ute to the for­ma­tion of the coun­try, while it is just a fur­ther­ance of President Trump’s attempts to trans­form the envi­ron­ment of the nation’s cap­i­tal to implant his failed pres­i­den­cy in the minds of the peo­ple at the expense of those same indi­vid­u­als and the beau­ty of the capital.

Trump tries to cre­ate mon­u­ments to him­self while he still holds office — by inscrib­ing his name on struc­tures such as the Kennedy Center and plac­ing his sig­na­ture on U.S. paper currency.

Of course, he will undoubt­ed­ly have a pres­i­den­tial library con­struct­ed after he leaves office, as have most oth­er pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents, but no oth­er for­mer pres­i­dents have attempt­ed to place their her­itage in so obvi­ous a man­ner as is under­way now for Trump.

There should prob­a­bly be lit­tle doubt that the new “ball­room” being con­struct­ed adjoin­ing the White House will even­tu­al­ly con­tain his name on its entrance — if Congress per­mits it.

Many of our for­mer pres­i­dents have been hon­ored with memo­ri­als in the cap­i­tal, includ­ing Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Franklin Roosevelt. But all those memo­ri­als were con­struct­ed long after those pres­i­dents left office and died.

The Washington Monument was not com­plet­ed until 1884, 85 years after Washington died. It might have been com­plet­ed ear­li­er, but Congress refused to appro­pri­ate funds when it was about half fin­ished, delay­ing con­struc­tion for many years.

The Jefferson Memorial was ded­i­cat­ed in 1943, 117 years fol­low­ing his death.

The Lincoln Memorial, prob­a­bly the most vis­it­ed memo­r­i­al in Washington, was com­plet­ed in 1922, 57 years after his assassination.

And the FDR memo­r­i­al was not com­plet­ed until 1997, 52 years after his death and after over 40 years of squab­bling over the design (which, inci­den­tal­ly, was not the design approved 40 years previously).

In all cas­es in which for­mer pres­i­dents were rec­og­nized for their ser­vice, the recog­ni­tion came after they had either been out of office for many years or had already died.

Those mon­u­ments were a tes­ta­ment to the great­ness of each of those pres­i­dents, eval­u­at­ed years after their terms of office.

The “Arc de Trump” is being pro­posed for con­struc­tion while he is still in office. If any memo­r­i­al to him is even­tu­al­ly based on his ser­vice while in office, he will most like­ly get a minia­ture bronze head stored some­where in a sup­ply clos­et in the base­ment of the Capitol.

Previous cel­e­bra­tions of the birth­days of the nation, the 100^th and 200^th, were com­mem­o­rat­ed with nation­wide cel­e­bra­tions, not with monuments.

Just to explain how hideous, how out­landish this pro­posed mon­u­ment is, con­sid­er the following.

It would be over 250 feet tall — includ­ing a 60-foot gold-winged stat­ue on top — nine­ty feet taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Its arched open­ing would be 110 feet tall, which is taller than the entire Lincoln Memorial, which stands only 99 feet tall. The gold on the top­ping stat­ue is a tes­ta­ment to President Trump’s obses­sion with all things gold, just as he has dras­ti­cal­ly redec­o­rat­ed the White House with gold ornamentation.

As a retired archi­tect, I am per­son­al­ly dis­gust­ed that an archi­tec­ture firm is even respon­si­ble for the ridicu­lous design of this pro­posed débâ­cle, one which would, if allowed, debase the beau­ty of the cap­i­tal city.

One can only hope that Congress will refuse to allo­cate any fund­ing for this project and that who­ev­er is respon­si­ble for allo­cat­ing space for pub­lic works in the cap­i­tal will not ded­i­cate any land to its erection.

Editor’s note: After this piece was sub­mit­ted, major news out­lets report­ed that the plan for the ‘tri­umphal arch’ had received the ini­tial approval of the Commission of Fine Arts. 

According to MSN, “President Donald Trump’s planned tri­umphal arch for Washington cleared a key hur­dle Thursday after its ear­ly designs secured approval from a fed­er­al arts pan­el whose mem­bers were hand­picked by the president.

“The Commission of Fine Arts, which has a new slate after Trump fired the pre­vi­ous mem­bers last year, vets designs and major archi­tec­tur­al projects in the nation’s cap­i­tal. It does not have the final say on con­struc­tion of the pro­posed arch.”