The Lincoln Memorial
A nice writeup on the Lincoln Memorial in the other Washington.
From the
Wall Street Journal:
A Misunderstood Monument
Critics of the Lincoln Memorial Insult Its Designers' Intelligence
Four score and six years ago this Memorial Day weekend, our fathers cut the ribbon at the Lincoln Memorial at the western end of the National Mall. Lincoln's only surviving son was there, and so was William Howard Taft, delivering a speech as large and windy as William Howard Taft. Warren Harding delivered an address, too -- a compliment paid to our greatest president from our worst.
As the years recede from its dedication in 1922, the memorial has come to stand for something its designers probably didn't foresee. It's a model of a certain way of understanding American history, a way that to some of us seems as starry-eyed and innocent as a preteen crush. You can't imagine it being built today, a half-century into our wised-up era.
When it opened there were already glimmers of this, the habitual pooh-poohing of the modern debunker. The architecture critic Lewis Mumford visited the memorial, gazed upon its classical serenity, noted its perfection of form and scale, and refused to be fooled. In truth, Mumford said, the Lincoln Memorial was a particularly clever piece of imperialist propaganda.
Read the whole thing -- the author (Andrew Ferguson) ties it up well and neatly puts Mumford in his place...
Posted by DaveH at May 26, 2008 9:57 PM