A memorial as unique as its subject — Dwight Eisenhower

Regarding Roger K. Lewis’s Jan. 28 Shaping the City column, “Gehry’s design for Eisenhower memorial misses the mark”:

Mr. Lewis did not mention the memorial core, but that is its prime element. It will contain a sculptural grouping of two heroic-scale bas reliefs depicting Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role as general and president.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

A figurative sculpture of Eisenhower at human scale, as a young man, will look out on the bas reliefs and his great life achievements. Behind this sculptural composition will be an eight-foot stone wall with large excerpts from three of Eisenhower’s most famous speeches. The tapestries will define an urban park that is the setting for the memorial. Bisecting this beautiful, new green space will be a grassed allee of trees providing a spectacular view of the Capitol.

Far from turning its back on the Education Department building, as Mr. Lewis stated, the design will create a unique spatial entrance, now called the LBJ Promenade, to the building. In his Oct. 12 letter to Eisenhower Memorial Commission Chairman Rocco C. Siciliano, Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote that “the Department of Education is pleased with the current design.. . .  From the beginning, we have been excited about the great potential for public engagement that the Memorial will bring to the Department of Education, and we remain so.”

We all agree that the memorial design can be done in different ways and viewed differently because of personal taste and preferences. Using classical elements of tapestry, bas reliefs, sculpture and figurative images, in a unique and nontraditional way, as this memorial does, not only honors Eisenhower but respects him for the innovative, forward-looking leader he was.

Carl Reddel, Washington

The writer is executive director of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission.