Avoid a Monumental Disaster

The controversial plan to build a sprawling World War II memorial on the Washington Mall is headed for needed reconsideration. The National Capital Planning Commission has voted unanimously to review the $100-million-plus project, whose inappropriate design and location have been widely faulted. In a step that should have been sought much earlier, the commission has asked the National Park Service to build a scale-model mock-up on-site, a basic step to heading off a potential architectural disaster. And it has invited a group of leading architects and urban designers to give their views on the project at a public hearing next month. Six years after President Clinton approved the site for the monument, it will finally get the realistic scrutiny it requires.

Criticism of the memorial has nothing to do with what it is intended to honor. A national monument recognizing the achievements of the 16 million Americans who served in uniform during World War II is long overdue. Along with the nation’s allies, they truly were the saviors of civilization.

The controversy over the plan stems from its proposed location, spread over more than seven acres of the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and its grim aesthetics. Consisting of a large pool, fountains, 56 17-foot-tall commemorative pillars, a pair of triumphal arches and an abundance of bronze eagles, wreaths and bas reliefs, the memorial seems more imperial than heroic, recalling more the self-exalting monuments of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy than the democracy that mobilized to defeat its totalitarian enemies.

Supporters of the project are concerned that further delay in starting work would deny many aging veterans of World War II the chance to see the remembrance of their service and their accomplishments completed. Yet a monument that in its scale, pretentiousness and intrusion on the Mall’s great sweep of open space proved more an embarrassment than a dignified tribute would only detract from the honor it is meant to convey.

When the American Battle Monuments Commission first proposed the memorial, it intended it to be built in a wooded area adjacent to the Mall called Constitution Gardens. Opponents of the current plan continue to urge use of that site, along with a design more appropriate to the cause and the people it commemorates.

By moving to reconsider its previous decisions, the National Capital Planning Commission has taken an important step in the right direction.