A federal commission charged with building a national memorial honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower voted unanimously Wednesday to approve architect Frank Gehry’s design for a park near the National Mall, allowing the project to move forward over the objections of Eisenhower’s family.
Gehry, whose Los Angeles-based firm was selected for the project in 2009, presented some changes to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission before the vote. He plans to add bas-relief stone or bronze carvings that depict Eisenhower’s accomplishments as Army general and president. The carvings will accompany 9-foot-tall bronze statues of Eisenhower that Gehry added to the design last year.
The Pritzker Prize-winning architect said the design evolved over time as he listened to ideas from Eisenhower’s family. He added imagery of the D-Day landing at Normandy in World War II as a backdrop for a statue depicting Eisenhower addressing his troops. To show Eisenhower as president, Gehry plans to add an image of Eisenhower signing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to advance equal rights for African Americans.
“There are some significant changes,” he said. “We did listen. We did listen.”
A sculpture of a young Eisenhower sits on a wall near the other statues, looking out at his future accomplishments.
Gehry’s design calls for the memorial park to be framed with large metal tapestries showing Eisenhower’s boyhood home on the Kansas plains. But Eisenhower’s family objects to the tapestry concept, saying last year that the metal material won’t last forever and is “impractical and unnecessary.”
Adding more images of D-Day and from a key moment of Eisenhower’s presidency make the president’s story more complete, said Daniel Feil, the project’s executive architect.
“There’s more of a dynamic going on because you have two different points in time depicted within one sculptural composition,” Feil said of Gehry’s revisions. “He’s making it stronger. It’s more powerful.”
Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, a member of the memorial commission, read a letter from Eisenhower’s granddaughters Susan and Anne Eisenhower voicing continued objections. They wrote the family will not support Gehry’s current design. They have supported legislation in the House to scrap the design and start the process over.
Simpson said the family’s objections should be considered, but he ultimately voted to approve the design.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said he and his staff had worked hard to be “honest brokers” to resolve differences with the family. Roberts said he had supported Gehry’s design from the beginning with modifications “because it brings Kansas to the National Mall” and reflects Eisenhower’s roots and values for all Americans.
“At the end of the day, there was just an impasse,” he said. “I’m sorry we have not been able to work things out … but I also know that we have to move forward.”
There is increased urgency to complete the memorial, Roberts said, because the World War II generation that Eisenhower led will soon be gone.
Commission Chairman Rocco Siciliano, who served in Eisenhower’s White House, said Eisenhower’s family has been involved in the project for more than a decade. The president’s grandson, David Eisenhower, was a member of the commission until he resigned in late 2011. About the same time, Susan Eisenhower began voicing public objections to the scope and scale of the project on behalf of the family.
“The family deserves to be heard, but they do not deserve to be obeyed,” Siciliano said.
The 12-member memorial commission kept Gehry’s metal tapestries concept as part of the design, despite objections from some critics who called it an “avant-garde approach” to memorial architecture. Others have praised Gehry’s concept for its innovation.
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