University Times

Pitt faculty member examines the history of the National Mall’s memorial landscape

The May 31 Memorial Day holiday will be marked with parades and public displays in remembrance of American soldiers who have died in service to the nation.

In Washington, D.C., commemorative events include a patriotic parade and wreath-laying ceremonies at monuments including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the World War II Memorial.

The two memorials are among the newest on the National Mall, which serves as the focal point for honoring the nation’s important heroes, history and heritage.

The Mall, which extends from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, has the Washington Monument as its central focus. The expansive lawns, reflecting pool and stately structures exude an aura of timelessness and permanence, but the development of the nation’s “monumental core” took shape only about a century ago.

Kirk Savage, chair of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, traces the little-known history of how this nexus for national reflection was transformed from a collection of gardens, woods and monuments to a cohesive, powerful memorial space in his award-winning 2009 book “Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape.”

Loosely based on Pierre L’Enfant’s 18th-century design for the capital, a new plan emerged in 1902. The Senate Park Improvement Plan, informally known as the “McMillan Plan” (for Sen. James McMillan, who championed the redesign), laid the framework for the public space as it is today.

“To create this monumental core required acts of conquest and destruction far more sweeping than any L’Enfant had contemplated: The clearing and leveling of acres of trees and gardens, extensive demolition of housing, massive construction on landfill and miles of new roads,” Savage wrote.

The redevelopment drew protests from residents who felt attached to their parkland, with critics decrying the land clearing and destruction of trees as “the rape of the Mall.”

Local attachments had to yield to a space that would signify national unity. “Historical amnesia was not an accidental by-product of the monumental core. The process of forgetting what was once there became integral to its very creation, because unlike most other places this one was supposed to look eternal, as if it were the one and only landscape that deserved to exist there,” Savage wrote.

The development of the “monumental core” over time reflects a shift in expectations for public monuments, changes that the planners could not have envisioned. “From objects of reverence and emulation — the archetypical hero on a pedestal — monuments became spaces of reflection and psychological engagement,” Savage wrote.

Memorials to Grant and Lincoln (completed in the 1920s) introduced a “tragic mood” to the memorial landscape. The rise of “victim” monuments and the use of the Mall’s open spaces as a stage for civil rights demonstrations, anti-war gatherings and other historically important events likewise contributed to the Mall’s power and its role in presenting visitors with a complicated collective history.

The design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated in 1982, “turned the neoclassical memorial landscape upside down,” popularizing a style of monument in which the space is the memorial, Savage wrote.

“At the beginning of the 21st century, national memorials are now expected to be spaces of experience, journeys of emotional discovery, rather than exemplary objects to be imitated,” he wrote. “Memorial spaces find themselves juggling the relatively new psychological demands of discovery and healing with traditional demands for patriotic or inspirational teaching.”

The rise of online memorials will not diminish the importance of a physical place where people can take in the emotional experience “in physical space with a real object,” Savage said. In contrast to the cyber world, “Places may be more cherished, where you can gather with other people,” he told the University Times.

In fact, he foresees increasing interaction between the physical and cyber realms. Handheld Internet-capable devices free visitors from toting a guidebook to enhance the memorial experience. New life may be breathed into obscure or nearly forgotten monuments as tourists turn to their smart phones and other devices for more information.  Cell phone audio tours for the Mall’s monuments are in development.

Individually, a visitor may google an inscription on a monument to gain better understanding, or turn to the Internet for additional information on an unfamiliar memorial. “The possibilities for interpretation are limitless versus what you get there on the site,” he said. “It adds a whole other dimension to the monument.”

Today, the federal government has declared the Mall’s central corridors to be “a substantially completed work of civic art.” A master plan for the 21st century embraces the central “reserve” zone (stretching from the White House to the Jefferson Memorial and the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial) in which no new memorials may be built.

But the inherently conservative aim to close the Mall to further change is doomed to failure, Savage contends, arguing, “You can’t just say ‘We’re done now,’” as if nothing worthy of being memorialized will arise in the future.

The concept of a “monumental core” infuses the space with power, focusing visitors’ attention on a relatively small area of land. “It supercharges the monuments located there,” creating competition among special interests for their claim to a piece of that sacred space, Savage said.

More comprehensive thinking about the process of creating national memorials is needed, he said. “A lot of very important groups, populations, voices, don’t get heard in the process.”

The controversy and debate that accompanies proposals for new memorials and monuments “is not necessarily a bad thing,” Savage said, noting that the different ideas that spring from the viewpoints of different groups are “part and parcel of democracy.”

However, with a few notable exceptions —the Lincoln Memorial, for example — most monuments, in time, lose meaning and become obsolete, Savage said. He noted that comparatively few people visit the World War I memorial, adding that there already is a change in the audiences visiting the Vietnam memorial as veterans and visitors who are connected directly to the names on the wall increasingly give way to younger viewers not yet born during the Vietnam era. The shift has prompted memorial administrators to develop an underground museum to be built nearby — “a supplementary monument to the monument,” Savage said — to aid in the understanding of its time in history.

In his book, Savage argues for a new sort of ephemeral memorial. He proposes a trial period during which no new monuments would be built, but temporary installations would be solicited.

“Shifting the ground from the permanent to the ephemeral would alter the system dramatically,” he wrote. “The idea would be to treat the memorial landscape more as an open conversation than a quest for an immutable national essence.”

Such concepts are being tested elsewhere, as in London’s Trafalgar Square. There, the “fourth plinth” project commissions temporary works that are displayed for a year or two each. Traditional statues sit atop three of four plinths on the square, but the fourth — which also was to have an equestrian statue atop — sat empty until the public art project was established in 1999.

Noting that the Mall’s administrators are examining the process through which monuments are authorized, Savage said a forum in which his proposal will be explored is being organized.

He sees value in considering the questions of who and what we memorialize, echoing the longstanding observation that many monuments are military in nature. “Why do we have such a focus on war? Do we need that? Do we want that? Do we change?” he asked.

New memorials could reflect a broader, more global ideal, he said, pointing out the “parochial” focus on our war dead in memorials that typically fail to recognize allies or others who also are worthy of remembrance.

“We could think of the message in a more globalized way than a nationalistic way,” Savage said. “Building bridges rather than using monuments as a way to divide us.”

His ephemeral monument concept would foster a broader range of memorials, including more radical displays that would “provoke more discussion and get people thinking differently,” Savage said.

“It’s a way of generating new ideas of what monuments can be. We’d get a lot more things than we had before. Some would be awful, some would be offensive, some would be controversial. Some might point the way to a new kind of memorial.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow