Trump’s D.C. Arch Completes A Longstanding National Aspiration

President Trump has honored our nation and its noble veterans throughout both terms of his presidency. Now, President Trump is planning to complete a long overdue project to honor our nation’s veterans by building a monumental arch on Memorial Circle at the entrance of Arlington National Cemetery.

It is a national embarrassment that policy makers have neglected for more than 100 years to build a congressionally authorized monument on this circle to honor our nation and its veterans. As chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, I applaud President Trump’s historic efforts to build a monumental arch at Memorial Circle, and will vote to approve this project.

In 1925, Congress enacted a law authorizing the executive branch to construct a monumental project linking the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. The centerpiece of this project would be a monumental plaza on Columbia Island between Robert E. Lee’s home atop Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.

Congress envisioned that this plaza would symbolize the enduring unity of North and South and provide a fitting entrance to the cemetery where our grateful nation has laid its veterans to rest. Under the original plan, two massive 166-foot columns topped by allegorical figures would dominate the plaza.

The 1925 Act was the culmination of a decades-long campaign to create a monumental landscape linking Washington, D.C. and Virginia, North and South. President Andrew Jackson promoted such a project as “a symbol of the firmly established union of the North and South,” and Daniel Webster to span the river “with arches of ever-enduring granite, symbolical of the firmly established union of the North and the South.”

After the Civil War, Congress was inundated with numerous proposals for a project. The famous 1902 McMillan Plan, which still governs DC’s planning, called for a monumental project to bridge North and South.

Finally, in 1925, Congress enacted the recommendation of the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission and tasked the executive branch with constructing the project, including the “monumental treatment” of Columbia Island, subject to design changes that in the executive branch’s “discretion may be found to be necessary or advisable.” Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant III served as the executive director of the project (and later as chairman of the National Capital and Parks Planning Commission).

The government completed the Memorial Bridge phase of the project, but sadly never finished the Columbia Island portion. Due to both the Great Depression and issues with a nearby (and now gone) air field, the monumental columns were abandoned in the 1930s. The fountains framed by 65-foot, Roman forum-like columns, which were to replace the monumental columns, were also never constructed. Instead, in the 1940s, the government installed a placeholder traffic circle, now known as Memorial Circle, which remains there.

The 1925 Act is still in effect and authorizes President Trump to finish this project. Indeed, as late as 1951, the government was still working on other aspects of the project, such as installing the massive Arts of War and Peace equestrian statues at the D.C. side of the bridge, which were accepted as a gift from the Italian government. Decades-long lags between congressional authorization and project completion are commonplace—for example, the Fourth Infantry Division Memorial, right next to where the arch will go, was authorized in 1935 but not installed until 2000.

The absence of a monument at Memorial Circle is a disgrace to our country and especially to our veterans. Congress intended Columbia Island to have a monumental plaza as a fitting entrance to the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, there is nothing but an empty traffic circle that pedestrians cannot even access.

NCPC Chairman Grant recognized that the “temporary road with an informal circle” was untenable and stressed that “the central plaza on Columbia Island had never been undertaken and seems to be absolutely essential to link together the two parts of the project, namely the main bridge itself and the entrance to Arlington Cemetery.” As the current NCPC chairman, I recently walked the grounds and can confirm my predecessor’s observation. This empty circle is fundamentally at odds with the 1925 Act and does not give our veterans the honor they deserve.

President Trump’s Triumphal Arch will finally bring this project to completion. Like the monumental plaza envisioned in the 1925 act, the arch will signify American unity and greatness. The pillars of the arch will reach 166 feet, the exact same height as the initial columns, and will be topped with winged figures like the originals.

The inscription across the arch, “One Nation Under God,” perfectly captures the vision of great Americans going back to Jackson and Daniel Webster. And placing this arch at the entry of Arlington National Cemetery will show that our nation reserves its grandest monuments for an entryway to the graves of those who fought to defend her freedoms.

The arch will also offer veterans, families, and grateful Americans with unparalleled views into Arlington National Cemetery. And the military has determined that the arch is a necessary platform from which to provide advance defense capabilities for our capital.

Washington, D.C. is the only capital of a great nation that lacks a monumental arch. President Trump is finishing yet another project that has been allowed to languish for decades and finally providing an appropriately grand gateway to the final resting place of our brave men and women at Arlington.

Mark Paoletta served as a lawyer in the George H.W. Bush White House Counsel’s office and worked on the confirmation of Justice Thomas. He served as General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget during the Trump Adminstration. He is a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.