The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday approved the design for the triumphal arch that President Donald Trump wants built at an entrance to the nation’s capital, a key step in the project’s process.
Commissioners, all appointed by Mr. Trump, acted despite overwhelming public opposition to the 250-foot arch, one of several projects that Trump is pursuing alongside a White House ballroom to leave his imprint on Washington.
“The building is beautiful,” the commission’s chairman, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., said shortly before the vote on a design revised slightly from what was presented to the federal agency in April.
The arch would stand 250 feet tall from its base to a torch held aloft by a Lady Liberty-like figure on top of the structure. The statue would be flanked on top by two gilded eagles, but the four lions envisioned as guarding the base are now gone. The phrases “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All” would be inscribed in gold lettering atop either side of the monument.
A public observation deck on top would provide 360-degree views of the surroundings.
The commission’s vice chairman, architect James McCrery II, said in April that he preferred the arch without the figures on top, which would have reduced the arch’s height by about 80 feet. Critics of the project argue the arch would dominate the skyline and disrupt views from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery.
At 250 feet, the arch would be significantly taller than the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial, which sits across Memorial Bridge. The Washington Monument is 555 feet.
Commissioners were told at Thursday’s meeting that Mr. Trump considered the suggestion to remove the statue on top “but elected not to pursue such an option.”
McCrery recommended doing away with the lions on the base and objected to plans for an underground tunnel for pedestrians to get to the arch, which would be built on a traffic circle. Both design elements have been removed.
Preliminary surveys and testing of the site began last week.
A group of veterans and a historian have sued the Trump administration in federal court to block construction on grounds that the arch would disrupt the sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery, among other reasons. So far, the judge has yet to intervene.
The commission received about 1,000 public comments. CFA secretary Thomas Luebke said that “100% of the comments were against the project,” reading one that criticized the arch’s scale. It said the arch would “assert itself as a dominant vertical element in a skyline that has resisted such intrusions.”
The Republican president and his interior secretary, Doug Burgum, have argued Washington is the only major Western world capital without such an arch. Burgum’s department includes the National Park Service, which manages the plot where Mr. Trump wants to put the arch.
In a post to Truth Social last month, the president said it “will be the GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World.”
The president has said some of his other projects, such as adding a blue coating to the interior of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, will beautify the city in time for July 4 celebrations of America’s 250th birthday.
Trump’s rehab of the Reflecting Pool is also the subject of a court challenge brought by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, which said the administration’s moves to repaint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool blue without first undergoing relevant reviews ran afoul of federal preservation laws governing historic sites.
The nonprofit group argued in a lawsuit filed last week that the changes at the Reflecting Pool are part of Trump’s broader effort to push through dramatic renovations in Washington without proper reviews and undermine the tone of the area.
“No consulting parties have been notified, engaged, or given an opportunity to participate,” attorneys representing TCLF wrote in a 26-page complaint. “This latest desecration of the reflecting pool is part of a pattern — epitomized most notably by the rush to destroy the East Wing of the White [House] — in which this Administration willfully disregards legal limits established by Congress.”
