Oh, I should also mention that the White House looks much smaller than I had imagined. My journalist friend said that almost everyone seeing it for the first time in person has that impression.
My views on these two memorials in particular are opposite. To me the WWII memorial is a vulgar, unimaginative, horrible structure.
The Vietnam memorial was quite controversial when it opened, but it has become one of the most beloved. It has managed to give physical form to the idea of the Vietnam War as a scar on the American psyche. It successfully represents the things that the war represents to us as a people—a dark line of names of the dead. And when the statue of the three soldiers reflects just so into the black stone with the names it’s quite haunting.
I’ve heard other people say that about the Whitehouse, I think part of it is because it is set so far back from the road. When I was a kid, I did a field trip to the WH and got a glimpse of Gerald Ford. I think that is the only time I’ve been in it.
ETA: Ascenray I agree with you on the WWII memorial, it glamorizes war and I’m old enough to remember when the Mall wasn’t crowded with tacky monuments every ten feet.
I’m not a huge fan of the Vietnam memorial either but I like it better than the WW2 memorial. The WW2 memorial has the same starkly monumental neoclassical aesthetic used by fascist and communist regimes which granted, does evoke the era it is referring to, but not the freedom the US was partially fighting for. As someone, maybe even on this MB, quipped, “it’s rare that a memorial is designed by the losers of the conflict.”
The Korean War memorial has a similarly haunted atmosphere that I find appropriate
No one just walks in to the White House. Even US citizens need to get an invitation from their Congressperson to visit the White House. The Secret Service has to vet everyone who sets foot on the property.
Trust me, you really didn’t miss anything.
I know that. The point is that congresspeople actually respond to requests from their constituents for invitations, whereas embassies (or at least mine) don’t. I asked a representative of the National Park Service about this and she told me that the best way of getting on a White House tour as a foreigner is to get someone resident in the US to write to their congressperson on your behalf for an invitation. She said it doesn’t matter if the resident is a citizen or not, as long as they write to the representative or senator responsible for the place in which they live. It’s also important to write several months in advance, and to avoid asking for tours during the school year, since local school groups will be given priority over foreign visitors.
Personally, I think that a stark listing of all of the names of the dead is exactly the right tone for a war memorial to be striking.
I was in DC for a few days just after psychonaut, so I piggybacked on some of the ideas in this thread. I’d already planned the Capitol tour and several of the Smithsonian museums, but thanks to ideas here, I also booked the Holocaust museum in advance, and made sure I saw the Library of Congress and African American museum. They were all excellent suggestions.
This was my favorite of the memorials. WWII was pretty, but felt inappropriate as a war memorial. I appreciated Vietnam, but I didn’t know any names on the wall, so it was difficult to connect with it. We saw the Korean memorial at night, and the statues looked realistic and yes, haunting. The pictures on the wall made it more personal for me than a list of names.
ETA: On re-reading, “favorite memorial” sounds weird. Memorials aren’t something I enjoy seeing. But I think you get what I’m trying to say.
I hadn’t planned in advance on visiting the African American museum, but on Saturday afternoon, when it looked like I might have time to squeeze it in after all, I went there to see if it was possible to make an advance booking for the following day. Unfortunately, this was not possible; the staff told me that advance bookings for the weekend can be made only online, and I couldn’t do this because I don’t have a smartphone, my Airbnb had no printer, and I didn’t see any Internet cafes in the city.
I haven’t seen an Internet cafe in almost 20 years. Computers are available at the public libraries and at some FedEx Office locations.
TIL you can use AirBnb without a smartphone.
It’s highly regarded now, to the extent that there are several unofficial replicas that travel the country and get overblown receptions with police escorts and parades. I think it’s equaled or maybe even eclipsed the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as the definitive national war memorial. But that’s also all tied up in the politics of the war itself and its aftermath. I don’t know if it will still be so well-known in a hundred years.
But it was extremely controversial when the design was unveiled. Some people just didn’t like the design, but there was also a more…reactionary backlash, especially because it was designed by a Chinese-American woman.
I’m not quite as offended by the design of the WW2 memorial as some others are, but I don’t think it needed to be smack in the middle of the Mall, and I still wonder if that’s not an echo of the Vietnam Memorial controversy.
The history of the Vietnam memorial is well documented. A private group raised over $8 million for it. A selection committee appointed by Congress selected the design by Maya Lin out of some 1,400 submissions.
The selection was blind, and no doubt some of the controversy grew out of the fact that when the winner was revealed, E turned out to be a Chinese-American student at Yale.
There was quite a backlash at the time, which resulted in the addition of the Three Servicemen statue.