The president and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cast the proposed “Trump promenade” as fulfilling an early-20th-century vision to connect the National Mall with the nearby waterfront.
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President Donald Trump has announced his next Washington construction project: a pedestrian bridge he says will connect the National Mall with the Potomac River.
The planned walkway would flank the Lincoln Memorial and take pedestrians over a pair of busy roadways, the president and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon. The project is the latest in Trump’s growing list of changes to Washington’s monumental core, including his recent effort to renovate the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.
“It’s a beautiful project, and it’s going to take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac,” Trump said, adding that officials were still discussing a name for the walkway. “They want to call it the ‘Trump promenade,’ but I don’t know if I want to do that.”
Burgum said the new bridge would help visitors to the Lincoln Memorial — particularly tourists from around the world — navigate more of Washington.
“They don’t know that a hundred yards away is the beautiful Potomac River,” Burgum said. “Now they’d be able to walk around the Lincoln Memorial, walk on a pedestrian bridge over the first highway, walk over the next one, and right down to the water.”
Trump and Burgum cast the planned bridge as the fulfillment of ideas considered in a 1901-1902 report overseen by the Senate Park Commission,known as the McMillan Plan, which laid the groundwork for construction of the National Mall and the beautification of much of the city’s core. Urban planners at the time considered proposals that would have more directly connected the Lincoln Memorial with the nearby river and allowed for construction of a promenade.
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Trump said Thursday that he was also restoring the original entrance of the Lincoln Memorial, contending that the “main entry” to the memorial was intended to be from the water.
“At the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, the back was supposed to be the front,” the president said.
Outside architects and historians said they were puzzled by Trump’s remarks about the Lincoln Memorial, saying that he was misconstruing its design. They noted that the National Mall and the surrounding city have evolved since the McMillan Plan and called for more public discussion and a formal review of Trump’s latest project before it proceeds.
“What a mess,” said Caren Yglesias, an architect who teaches on the McMillan Plan at the University of Maryland. “Look up the McMillan Plan and you’ll see many different elements that were not built.”
Trump has pursued a number of major projects in and around the National Mall, including renovating the Reflecting Pool on the east side of the Lincoln Memorial, gilding the statues on the nearby Arlington Memorial Bridge, and planning a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch by Arlington National Cemetery.
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Philip Kennicott contributed to this report.
