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U. S. national memorial in Washington, D. C.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial is a United States presidential memorial in Washington, D. C. honoring Dwight David Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States. Located to the south of the National Mall, the national memorial is set in a park like plaza, with large columns framing a mesh tapestry depicting the site of the Normandy landings, and sculptures and bas reliefs arrayed in the park. Architect Frank Gehry designed the memorial and Sergey Eylanbekov sculpted the bronze statues of Eisenhower in various settings. The memorial's tapestry artist was Tomas Osinski, and the inscription artist, Nicholas Waite Benson. On October 25, 1999, the United States Congress created the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, and charged it with creating " an appropriate permanent memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower to perpetuate his memory and his contributions to the United States." Originally designed as a "roofless" temple outlined by large columns, and mesh tapestry "walls", the preliminary design proved controversial. After several years of hearings and several design changes by Gehry, including reducing the number of columns and tapestries, final design approvals were given in 2017, and the groundbreaking ceremony was held at the site on November 3 of that year, which was attended by dignitaries. The dedication ceremony was initially scheduled for May 8, 2020, the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, but was postponed to September 17, 2020, due to the COVID 19 pandemic.

Three individuals were behind the successful effort to establish a memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower: Rocco Siciliano, Senator Daniel Inouye (D Hawaii), and Senator Ted Stevens (R Alaska). Siciliano, a Roman Catholic, Italian American born in Utah, was called to active duty as a private in 1943 while a ROTC student. Promoted quickly to first lieutenant in the United States Army, he was awarded a Bronze Star for valor for his actions as part of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment during the Italian Campaign. A graduate of Georgetown Law School, he worked for the National Labor Relations Board from 1948 to 1950, and was appointed by Eisenhower in 1953 to be the Assistant Secretary of Labor for employment and manpower activities. In 1957, Eisenhower made Siciliano his Special Assistant to the President for Personnel Management. In 1958, he engineered a meeting between Eisenhower and African American leaders of the civil rights movement: Lester Granger, Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins. After decades of public service, Siciliano became head of the Eisenhower Institute in the 1990s. The 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings and the approach of the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's election as president increased interest in the 34th President. In 1999, his last year as the institute's chairman, Siciliano decided to push for a memorial to Eisenhower. Siciliano knew Senator Stevens, a highly decorated World War II Army Air Forces pilot who had worked in the Department of the Interior during the Eisenhower administration and who had proved critical in winning statehood for Alaska. The Eisenhower Institute had also honored Stevens with its Eisenhower Leadership Prize in 1999. Siciliano broached the idea of a memorial with Stevens. Stevens suggested a bipartisan effort, and brought Senator Inouye into the effort. Inouye had served in Italy with the 442nd Infantry Combat Regiment, losing his right forearm in combat, and later being awarded the Medal of Honor. Siciliano worked with Stevens and Inouye to write the legislation that would authorize a memorial and establish a memorial commission. Senators Stevens and Inouye were both appointed to the conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act in 1999. The conferees inserted language (Section 8162) to authorize the memorial and establish the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission into the conference report. The House approved the appropriations act 372 to 55 on October 13, and the Senate followed by a vote of 87 to 11 on October 14. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law (P. L. 106–79) on October 25, 1999. P. L. 106 79 appropriated $300,000 to fund the commission's initial activities. The law established a 12 member commission, four of whom were to be appointed by the President, four by the Senate (equally split between both political parties), and four by the House (equally split between both political parties). The law provided for a chair and vice chair (they could not be members of the same political party), the appointment of new members in case of vacancy, and a date for the initial meeting (nor more than 45 days after all appointments have been made). Members of the commission would receive no compensation. The commission had the power to spend money appropriated or donated to it, accept donations, hold hearings, and enter into contracts. It was required to make annual reports to the President and Congress, and make a report about the memorial plans as soon as possible. In 2008, Congress enhanced the commission's duties and powers. Section 332 of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (P. L. 110–229; May 8, 2008) more clearly defined the commission's ability to solicit donations and contract for specialized services, and permitted it to do so outside of existing federal law. The commission was also empowered to seek the assistance of any federal agency (so long as it paid for that assistance), enter into cooperative agreements with the same, and to procure administrative and support services from the General Services Administration. A commission staff was also established. An executive director was required to be employed, and the commission was authorized to hire staff (including an architect, and no more than three senior staff) and accept volunteers. Commissioners (and staff and volunteers) were now reimbursed for their reasonable travel expenses. Most importantly, an unlimited amount of money was authorized (but not actually appropriated) to carry out the commission's duties and to design and construct the memorial.

The basic theme of the Eisenhower memorial was outlined at the Eisenhower Memorial Commission's first meeting in June 2000. Senator Stevens said he wanted an out of the box design, and Senator Inouye said the design should be so spectacular that the Eisenhower Memorial would surpass the Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial as the most visited memorial in the nation's capital. According to Washingtonian magazine, chairman Siciliano early on raised architect Frank Gehry as a potential designer. Siciliano was already friends with Gehry: they both lived in Santa Monica, California, and Siciliano's late wife had introduced them. Siciliano also sat on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which in 1991 commissioned Gehry to design its acclaimed Walt Disney Concert Hall. Selection of this site immediately caused controversy. Some urban planning advocates who wanted to restore Maryland Avenue SW to its original alignment through the square were angry because the memorial would preclude it. The choice of the Maryland Avenue site involved additional congressional action. The Commemorative Works Act barred the erection of any memorials within "Area 1", the National Mall and its immediate environs. Any memorial erected in Area 1 required the approval of Congress. Congress provided that approval in "Approving the location of the commemorative work in the District of Columbia honoring former President Dwight D. Eisenhower" (P. L. 109–220; May 5, 2006), which authorized construction of the memorial within Area 1.

The design process began in 2006. At a commission meeting to consider design principles in March 2006, Siciliano mentioned Gehry for a second time as a possible designer. Susan Eisenhower, who was present as a member of the audience, asked if "the design vocabulary would be modern or traditional". Edward A. Feiner, former chief architect of GSA and the creator of the Design Excellence Program. also objected to the memorial competition for being a closed competition. Critics also included Paul D. Spreiregen, architect, professional advisor for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition, and former chairman of the American Institute of Architects' Committee on Competitions, who in 2011 called for a design competition open to the public. On February 29, 2012, Representative Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, launched an investigation into the competition. Although Issa's primary concern was the memorial's design, Issa requested that Eisenhower Memorial Commission chair Rocco Siciliano provide the committee with copies of all proposed designs submitted during the competition, a detailed description of competition process and the means by which the commission selected the Gehry submission, and documentation on all votes taken by the commission regarding the competition. Issa, in his capacity as an ex officio member of the National Capital Planning Commission, also directed the Eisenhower Memorial Commission to preserve all documentation related to the competition and the Gehry design. Issa's investigation went no further than that in 2012. However, on March 20, 2012, the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing into the design competition. Subcommittee chairman Representative Rob Bishop (R Utah) asked how much it would cost to run a second design competition, Although the subcommittee selected mostly witnesses who were critical of the Gehry design, a few defended the design competition process as fair. William J. Guerin, assistant commissioner for the Office of Construction at GSA, said critics mischaracterized the call for proposals as a closed competition. Architectural critic Aaron Betsky decried the general tone of the hearing as "mindless innuendo and vituperative allegations", and Cramer agreed.

On March 25, 2010, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission unanimously selected the preferred design concept created by Frank O. Gehry and the commission and design team completed its first round of meetings with federal review agencies. The setting for the memorial on Maryland Avenue would be framed by giant welded steel tapestries supported by columns 80 feet (24 m) tall by 10 feet (3 m) wide. The largest tapestry would extend nearly the entire city block length of the Department of Education Building, and would depict an aerial view of Normandy Beach at the present day. Elements of Eisenhower's home in Abilene, Kansas would be included, according to the commission. Gehry's initial tapestry design, which depicted the Kansas landscape, received unanimous concept approval from United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) on September 15, 2011, including affirmation that the scale and artistry were appropriate. The Department of Education originally questioned the tapestries. However, following revisions and meetings including the review of tapestry mock ups, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote that the U. S. Department of Education supported the current design of the memorial. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) also expressed support for the design but had not yet given preliminary approval. The Architect of the Capitol endorsed Gehry's design revision, and "applaud[ed] the decision, courage, and commitment of time" that the design team gave to the Section 106 Consultation Meeting process, noting that there were no negative impacts on the view and vista of the U. S. Capitol. The commission's preferred design concept was approved in March 2010, which included the approval of Commissioner David Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower's grandson. It represents Eisenhower as president and general through large stone bas reliefs and text. Although final images and quotations were still under consideration, the leading alternative image representing the general was General Eisenhower with 101st Airborne troops prior to the D Day invasion in June 1944. Memorials in Washington have historically been controversial. The design was severely criticized by the president's son John Eisenhower and granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, who said her entire family opposed it. Robert Campbell, the Boston Globe's architecture critic, said about the design, "It's way too big. It's too cartoony. Someone should scrub the design and start over." Roger L. Lewis, an architect and a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, criticized and opposed the design in The Washington Post: "Building a quasi fenced precinct makes no sense. The narrative theme relating to Eisenhower's boyhood, so visually dominant in the present design, also makes no sense. Gehry instead could craft a less grandiose yet visually powerful memorial composition " Columnist Richard Cohen wrote that the Memorial did not accurately capture Eisenhower's life. George F. Will also opposed the design in The Washington Post. The design has been criticized in The New Republic, National Review, Foreign Policy, Metropolis Magazine, The American Spectator, and The Washington Examiner. Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post culture critic, praised the design: "Gehry has produced a design that inverts several of the sacred hierarchies of the classical memorial, emphasizing ideas of domesticity and interiority rather than masculine power and external display. He has 're gendered' the vocabulary of memorialization, giving it new life and vitality." Former member of the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts Witold Rybczynski, whose critique of the memorial appeared in The New York Times, praised the concept of the roofless building and defended the size of the tapestries: "Mr. Gehry and his collaborators have developed hand weaving techniques so that the screens really do resemble tapestries. Having seen full size mock ups of the screens on the site, I am convinced that their size will not be out of scale with the surroundings." David Childs, former chair of both the NCPC and U. S. Commission of Fine Arts, wrote to Congress in support of the design. Landscape architects Laurie Olin and William Pedersen called the design a worthy tribute to a great national leader that was "in sympathy with the character of Washington, D. C." The Washington Post editorial board also endorsed the project, noting that "Mr. Gehry's proposal promises to be a wonderful addition to the face of the Mall, a vision Washington is lucky to have. Moving forward, Congress should authorize these plans as quickly as possible so the memorial can proceed on schedule. As entertaining as these squabbles have often been, enough is enough already." Television producer Norman Lear expressed praise for Frank Gehry, citing Gehry's original concept of tracing the journey of a young man from Kansas to the pinnacles of success as a warrior and the leader of a great nation as "the very best way to illustrate President Eisenhower's significant achievements " Pulitzer Prize winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger lauded Frank Gehry in a Vanity Fair article for earnestly attempting to commemorate Eisenhower.

In December 2011, David Eisenhower resigned from the Eisenhower Memorial Commission. As the family's representative, Commissioner Eisenhower voted three times in favor of the preferred design concept, including most recently at the July 2011 Commission meeting. In January 2012, the National Civic Art Society published The Gehry 'Towers' Over Eisenhower: The National Civic Art Society Report on the Eisenhower Memorial, written by Justin Shubow, the organization's president. Quoted in a front page The New York Times story, the report is a book length critique of the memorial's competition, design, and agency approval. The Washington Post said the report received "a remarkable amount of attention, offering talking points for conservative columnists and critics." Writing in Better! Cities & Towns, Philip Langdon called the report "scathing" and said it included "devastating pieces of information." In May 2012, in response to public and congressional criticism Gehry proposed additional modifications to the memorial and the Eisenhower Commission published new mock ups by his firm on its website. On July 18, 2013, the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts approved the general concept of the memorial in a 3–1 vote. In August 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Bruce Cole to the Eisenhower Memorial Commission. Cole had previously criticized Gehry's design in articles and congressional testimony. Cole served on the board of advisors for the National Civic Art Society. On September 8, 2013, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission cancelled its appearance before the NCPC meeting scheduled for September 12. The Eisenhower Commission explained, "We have decided to forego appearing before NCPC on Sept. 12 in the belief that the next few months would be better spent satisfying the concerns addressed in the [NCPC's Executive Director's Recommendation]." According to The Washington Post, the NCPC recommendation "calls the testing of the memorial materials insufficient, takes issue with the scale and placement of the columns and tapestries, and raises questions about whether the design fulfills its aim to be an 'urban park.'" On November 21, 2013, the memorial again went before the Commission of Fine Arts, where commissioners critiqued the design, which did not receive approval. Commissioner Alex Krieger, Professor in Practice of Urban Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, said the design would fail as a "traditional first semester architecture exercise." Also in November, a "weary" Gehry told the Financial Times, "I don't know whether [the memorial] will get built." The New York Times reported that "The project's fate is uncertain." Congress's fiscal year 2014 omnibus bill appropriated only $1 million to the project instead of the requested $51 million, which halved the Eisenhower Commission's annual operating budget. The bill effectively blocked construction until the next round of appropriations. According to Roll Call the bill "zeroes out federal funding for construction and asks for a progress report on private fundraising efforts." On April 3, 2014, the National Capital Planning Commission voted 7 to 3 to deny preliminary approval of the memorial. The NCPC said it was supportive of a memorial, but rejected the current design because it failed to preserve the vista along Maryland Avenue SW, failed to preserve the view of the U. S. Capitol building, did not meet the L'Enfant Plan requirements for preserving open space, and did not "[respect] the building lines of the surrounding rights of way". At the request of Representative Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the NCPC asked the Eisenhower Memorial Commission to report back to it every two months on its memorial redesign. The following week, Issa sent a letter to the commission, asking it to consider a memorial design that eliminated the tapestries and columns. Gehry threatened to remove his name from the project if the stripped down version of the design Issa requested was approved and sent to the NCPC. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission met on September 17, 2014, to consider Gehry's design changes. But the commission lacked a quorum to conduct business, as only five members attended (all four presidentially appointed members, and Rep. Sanford Bishop). In a private vote conducted via email on September 23, the commission approved Gehry's revised design. A motion to delay consideration of the design for several weeks was defeated. The commission forwarded only one design (Gehry's preferred revision) to the NCPC for its consideration, rather than the two alternatives requested by Issa. On October 2, 2014, the NCPC voted 10–1 in to approve Gehry's revised preliminary design. The NCPC approved design now headed back to the CFA. On October 16, the CFA approved the revised preliminary design. This approval allowed the memorial's designers to begin working on the specifics of the memorial, such as the statuary, the specific quotations to be used, the fonts for these quotations, landscaping, paving, and more. CFA and NCPC approval were needed for all design specific elements.

Eisenhower Memorial architect Craig Webb met with the Commission of Fine Arts on February 19, 2015, to seek approval of the memorial's lighting design, but the CFA declined to approve his proposal and asked him to return with a more concrete plan (one which included details on the actual ground lights to be used, and the location and height of lighting poles). Webb delivered a presentation on the quotations to be used on the memorial, but CFA members questioned whether the plan to use extracted and combined quotations would create the impression of "authentic text" where none existed. Webb discussed landscaping and signage with the CFA in March 2015. The CFA was positive about the landscaping design, although it suggested some changes and ask for additional study. It was more critical of the signage, and asked for alterations. Webb discussed sculptural elements with the commission in April, and generally praised the improvements. A review of design concepts for the tapestries, columns, and overlook wall occurred in May 2015, and strongly approved of these. As is often the case, the CFA asked for full scale mock ups (both day and night) for these elements. On May 8, 2015, the National Park Service issued a final draft of its Determination of Effect, a legally required assessment of the project's negative impact on nearby historic properties. The document affirmed that any impact would be minimal. Prominent local architect Arthur Cotton Moore challenged this finding in a May 22 letter to the District of Columbia's State Historic Preservation Officer, arguing that the memorial would significantly alter the L'Enfant Plan. NPS Facility Division Chief Sean Kennealy replied to issues raised by Moore and others on June 4, concluding that Maryland Avenue SW would be enhanced by the elimination of parking lots and the memorial's alignment of tree plantings. The Commission of Fine Arts gave its unanimous final approval to the memorial's detailed plans on June 17, 2015. The approval meant that the memorial now needed the authorization of the NCPC, which scheduled a vote on for its final approval for July 9. On July 9, 2015, the NCPC voted 9–1 to approve the final design submissions for the Eisenhower Memorial. (At least one industry publication noted that the project was now a joint venture between Gehry Partners and AECOM, which provides technical and management support services.) Although the NCPC was worried about the durability of the tapestry material and welds, the memorial commission's submission assuaged these concerns.

With the Eisenhower family still unhappy with the memorial design, Congressional funding for the memorial appeared uncertain. James Baker, former U. S. Secretary of State and a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission advisory commission, met with members of the family and the design team and brokered a compromise. On September 14, 2016, Susan Eisenhower issued a letter in which she said Gehry Partners had agreed to include images of the D Day landing sites (as they exist today) on the metal tapestry. A new quote ("The proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene") would be added to the quotes carved into the blocks of stone. With these changes, the Eisenhower family agreed to support the memorial. Additional design changes were made in early December 2016. The metal tapestry was changed to remove all images of Abilene, and now only featured the present day Normandy coast at Pointe du Hoc. The statue of Eisenhower as a boy was relocated from its central location to a promenade located between the metal tapestry and the Department of Education building, Four trees near the center of the memorial were also removed to improve views of the tapestry. At its meeting on January 23, 2017, the CFA approved of the tapestry change, but did not support moving the boyhood statue behind the tapestry nor the removal of the four trees. The agency asked for the architects to revisit and resubmit the design for final approval, and asked that a full size, on site mock up of the Normandy tapestry be provided for commissioners' viewing to ensure the tapestry's legibility. In October 2017, the NCPC approved design changes to the tapestry showing the site of the Normandy landings centered on Pointe du Hoc, and placement of the boyhood statute, with related text.