President Donald Trump’s proposed construction of a towering arch in Washington, D.C., cleared an administrative hurdle Thursday, as the Commission of Fine Arts approved the design for the new structure at the center of Memorial Circle.
The proposed 250-foot triumphal arch would include a white granite facade and golden statues on the top. The architect – Nicolas Charbonneau, a principal architect at Harrison Designs – presented a toned-down version of the design that removed golden lion statues from the front as the commission had requested in a previous hearing.
The original plan also included a tunnel system, which the commission said brought too many potential security issues. On Thursday, the Interior Department presented a model with crosswalks across Memorial Circle that would make the monument accessible to pedestrians.
The fine arts commission, which considers plans for monuments and other D.C. projects, gave its expected approval months after Trump overhauled the panel with his appointees. The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to review the plans for the arch in early June.
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Despite the design changes, members of the general public and institutional leaders largely condemned the construction of the monument.
“This vista is one of the most symbolic landscape vistas in Washington, D.C., and was designed to represent the post-Civil War reconciliation between the northern states and the southern states,” Elizabeth Merritt, deputy general counsel of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said at the hearing.
Others who spoke Thursday said they were concerned about the arch dwarfing the nearby memorials, in size and meaning. The arch would sit between several monuments and spaces intended for posterity, reflection and memorializing the dead. Trump’s arch, however, is a celebration that many speakers at Thursday’s meeting did not welcome.
“The intent of the arch is a celebration of America and 250 years of greatness, freedom and posterity, for which we can only thank the wisdom of our founders and God’s providence,” Charbonneau said. “It is not primarily a monument dedicated to the dead, but to the living, to this great country and its endurance.”
The commission received 600 letters from the general public about the proposed arch, with only one letter that was fully in support, according to the commission’s secretary, Thomas Luebke.
Trump told reporters on Thursday he was happy to receive good news about the arch, which has been the subject of several legal challenges, including over whether Congress would need to approve it. The administration has repeatedly cited a century-old report for the Arlington Memorial Bridge that called for two 166-foot columns. They were never built, and now the Justice Department argues that when Congress ratified the bridge in 1925, it also approved the arch. When asked if he needed congressional approval, the president responded that the land is owned by the Interior Department.
“We don’t need anything from Congress,” he added.
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