The city’s historic preservation officer criticizes the president’s plan to build his towering arch in Memorial Circle, suggesting the administration should pick a spot near Nationals Park.
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The Trump administration should pick an “alternative site” for President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, a Washington, D.C., official told the administration last month, warning that Trump’s plan to build the structure by Arlington National Cemetery would be “divisive.”
David Maloney, the city’s historic preservation officer, said the plan to build in Memorial Circle — a traffic roundabout across the river from the Lincoln Memorial — would “severely damage an exceptional cultural landscape and one of the most important symbolic places in the nation.”
Maloney instead suggested a different spot that he said would be a better fit for the towering arch: an empty traffic oval located on South Capitol Street between Nationals Park and Audi Field.
“It would create an energizing focal point for a still-emerging neighborhood, suitable for a celebratory crowd,” Maloney wrote to the National Park Service in a June 26 letter posted by a federal commission reviewing the project. An arch located there could become a symbol of “sports triumph” linked with the nearby stadiums, he said, “and importantly, it would enhance the historic L’Enfant Plan and the city’s monumental landscape rather than detracting from it.”
Rodney Mims Cook Jr., a Trump appointee who chairs the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, had previously identified that site as a prospective location to build a triumphal arch.
Washington Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s office declined to comment on the proposal from Maloney, who has served as the city’s historic preservation officer since 2007. The historic preservation office does not always speak for the mayor and has some degree of autonomy in its work, city officials said.
Bowser has sought to strike a balance with Trump as he attempts to remake parts of Washington, encouraging him to tend to long-delayed repairs to local fountains. She has avoided public battles with the president over some of his more controversial changes to the city and its historic buildings, such as Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to build an expansive White House ballroom.
“We’re the only important and major city that doesn’t have one,” Trump said in the Oval Office in May. He also touted his plan to make it bigger than the 164-foot-tall Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
“We have to do slightly larger … otherwise you’d all be disappointed in me,” the president said, alluding to his propensity for large construction projects. “But it’s even far more beautiful.”
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Historic preservationists and advocacy groups have opposed the project, warning that the large arch — Trump’s most significant effort to change Washington’s skyline — would alter the city’s historic views.
Military veterans also have sued to block it, warning that the towering structure would harm their experience of visiting the nearby national cemetery. A federal judge is weighing the case.
The Commission of Fine Arts, which Trump has packed with allies, has approved the project. A second federal panel, the National Capital Planning Commission, is scheduled to weigh the proposal July 9.
Federal officials have also laid out an aggressive timetable to potentially complete work on the arch before Trump’s term ends, which would involve 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round.
Maloney, who declined an interview, has also questioned the Trump administration’s process to build the arch, criticizing the 10-day window for public comment. He also said that outside experts had been wrongly excluded from a federally required process, known as a Section 106 review, to consider the arch’s potential effects on historic properties.
Trump officials have declined to include a half-dozen historic preservation and advocacy groups in the process. All of the excluded organizations, which have historically offered input on past federal projects, have sued the Trump administration over the president’s construction and renovation projects.
The review process “is clearly an exercise designed to shield this controversial project from genuine public and expert scrutiny, rather than to reduce its harmful impacts on our shared heritage, which is owned by the public,” Rebecca Miller, the executive director of the DC Preservation League, wrote in a June 15 letter to the Park Service.
“The location does not suggest a likelihood of success for a celebratory monument,” Maloney wrote in his June 26 letter to the Park Service.
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