WASHINGTON — The Eisenhower Memorial Commission will move forward with a revised design of a memorial in Washington, D.C. to honor the nation’s 34th president, scrapping an alternate proposal that would have involved the loss of its famed architect.
The commission voted privately to present a design to the National Capital Planning Commission on Oct. 2 that keeps the controversial, steel mesh tapestry strung across massive 80-foot columns that depicts the rural landscape of Abilene, Kansas, where President Dwight D. Eisenhower grew up.
The tapestry and columns have been panned by critics and Eisenhower’s granddaughters as industrial, massive and too focused on the president’s childhood and not his accomplishments.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a member of the National Capital Planning Commission, had requested an alternate design that eliminated the tapestry and columns and would keep statues of Eisenhower as president and World War II general as the focal points of the four-acre urban park within view of the U.S. Capitol.
But the architect, Frank Gehry, designer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, would pull out of the project if that design was approved, citing a lack of architectural elements.
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