Build columns, not Trump’s arch, D.C. official tells administration
A historic preservation official wrote, “Approximately 93% of the roughly 11,000 comments submitted from within the District of Columbia expressed very strong opposition" to the arch.
President Donald Trump has insisted that a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch should be built near Arlington National Cemetery, citing long-abandoned plans to construct a monument there.
Local officials, preservationists, and historians are now pushing an alternate idea: Abandon the arch and consider building the slender columns that were originally envisioned by architects and lawmakers a century ago.
“We request meaningful consideration of an alternative that more accurately reflects the spirit and intent of the 1924 McKim Mead & White design and the 1925 Act of Congress,” C. Andrew Lewis, an official in Washington’s historic preservation office, wrote in a letter to the Trump administration on Wednesday and obtained by the Washington Post.
“Specifically, we request the [National Park Service] to evaluate design concepts consisting of two columns that truly frame, rather than limit the historic view corridor.”
The administration has been consulting with D.C.’s and Virginia’s historic preservation offices as part of a required federal preservation process before building the new structure.
Other officials and advocates have raised the idea of erecting columns, rather than a large arch, including in a meeting last week with National Park Service officials overseeing the planned project.
The requests represent advocates’ latest effort to delay or prevent the construction of the new arch, which has been widely opposed in Washington. It is unlikely, however, that Trump would agree to discard his plans for a large triumphal arch. The president has been attached to the idea of an arch since being privately pitched on the project and publicly announcing it last year
“We’re the only important and major city that doesn’t have one. We don’t have a triumphal arch,” Trump said in the Oval Office in May. “So, it was meant to be built for many years.”
The issue centers on lawmakers’ intent for Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington’s boundaries, located near the entrance to the military cemetery and managed by the National Park Service.
The administration is pursuing a plan to begin construction as soon as November, despite objections from veterans groups, historic preservationists, and others. Opponents say the arch will overshadow the cemetery, alter pedestrians’ views of the Lincoln Memorial and other historic sites, and cause other disruptions.
The Trump administration has acknowledged that the large arch will unavoidably harm local historic sites if built as planned.
The administration contends that it does not need approval for the arch from Congress since lawmakers a century ago authorized the columns. In that case, advocates say, the administration should hew to the original, congressionally authorized plan.
Historic preservationists also note that the 250-foot-tall, roughly 165-foot-wide arch that Trump wants in Memorial Circle is very different from the narrow, 166-foot-tall columns that were initially envisioned to be built about 300 feet apart.
“In terms of size, scale, massing, and design, the proposed arch is not in any way comparable to the unbuilt columns contemplated in the 1924 design proposal,” Judy Chesser and Paul Edmondson, of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, wrote in their own letter to the Interior Department on Wednesday. The letter was shared with the Post.
Chesser and Edmondson added that the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, which was overseeing the original project, dropped plans for the columns in 1931 amid concerns about the planned design and the proximity to a nearby airport, among other factors.
The Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, did not respond to questions about whether the administration would consider building columns instead of an arch. The department referred to social media posts by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that referenced the past efforts in Congress to build a monument near Memorial Circle.
Burgum’s posts did not specifically mention columns.
Tammy Stidham, a Park Service senior official helping oversee the arch project, said last week that the administration had not considered building columns instead of an arch.
“Different sizes were considered of the same structure, but not different structures,” Stidham said at a meeting with preservationists and other groups, according to a recording of the meeting posted by the Park Service.
Asked about how the arch envisioned by Trump complied with plans in 1924 to build a structure that would not interfere with the views between the cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, Stidham said the arch was a “replacement” for the original concept.
“It is not intended to be the same structure,” Stidham said.
One federal commission, which Trump has packed with allies, has already approved the planned arch. A second commission is expected to offer final approval as soon as Nov. 5. The Trump administration has laid out a plan to build the arch within two to three years, which they say would require 20 hours per day of construction.
In his letter to the administration, Lewis said that Trump officials had not heeded or fully acknowledged the widespread objections to the plan.
“Approximately 93% of the roughly 11,000 comments submitted from within the District of Columbia expressed very strong opposition to the proposal,” he wrote.
He also said that the administration’s acknowledgment of harms from building the arch did not go far enough to capture its impact on other historic sites.
“The arch would not merely be ‘prominently visible,’” Lewis wrote. “Instead, it would visually overwhelm the surrounding historic context.”
