What Fate Awaits Trump’s Triumphal Arch? [Eureka]

Groundbreaking for Donald Trump’s monumental triumphal arch in Washington is expected to begin soon. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said excavation for the structure, planned between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, would start within two weeks.

The arch takes Paris’s 50-meter Arc de Triomphe as its model, but Trump insisted that his version should be taller. The design now stands at 76 meters, roughly one and a half times the height of the Paris landmark. Plans also call for gold-colored decoration, golden angels and eagles, and a statue resembling the Statue of Liberty.

The project is officially described as a commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. But when Trump was asked in an interview whom the monument was for, he answered, “Myself.”

Trump has drawn opposition by pushing the project forward while bypassing procedures such as congressional consultation. A recent National Park Service report said the monument would change Washington’s skyline enough to damage views of dozens of historic landmarks. It warned that the arch could sever the symbolic relationship between the Lincoln Memorial, representing national reunification, and Arlington National Cemetery. It could also block views of the Kennedy presidential gravesite and the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

The article places the project against the idea of a “skyscraper curse,” the theory that record-setting construction begins during optimistic, liquid periods but reaches completion after an economic bubble has burst. It points to Constantine’s 21-meter arch, built in 315 as the Roman Empire entered its twilight, and Napoleon’s Paris arch, begun in 1806 after military victories but completed in 1836, long after Napoleon had abdicated. Both monuments, the article argues, were erected when their patrons believed their power had peaked, yet that power shifted elsewhere or collapsed before or around completion. The question hanging over Trump’s arch is whether it will escape that pattern.

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Myself