Reflections on a Monument

As the President tries to put his stamp on Washington, a new paint job at a much-loved landmark is grabbing headlines. Not the good kind.

In 1896, the sculptor Daniel Chester French hired his friend Henry Bacon, a New York City architect, to design a studio for him on a piece of land French had purchased in Stockbridge, Mass. Five years later, he asked Bacon to replace the property’s aging farmhouse with something more substantial. The result, a Georgian Revival residence of modest elegance, has made Chesterwood one of the Berkshires’ key attractions.

By 1920, the two men were collaborating on another project, one that is currently in the news. French had been commissioned to produce a massive sculpture of Abraham Lincoln, and Bacon to create the building that would house it: the Lincoln Memorial. Bacon added a 2,000 ft. long, 18 in. deep reflecting pool to connect that neo-classical icon with the nearby Washington Monument. Completed in 1923, the pool – a masterpiece of gray-granite simplicity – has become a favorite of visitors to the nation’s capital and a setting for some dramatic events in U.S. history.

The latest involves the pool itself, specifically President Donald Trump’s recent decision to coat its bottom in bright blue paint – “American flag blue,” as he calls it. The fuss heated up when he chose to flout laws requiring the approval of an expert panel, and ultimately Congress, for such a change.

Trump awarded a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings of Canton, Va., a small, privately owned firm with no previous government work and little experience involving pools – except, reportedly, at one of the President’s golf resorts. In his defense, Trump cited the urgency of completing the project in time for the nation’s 250^th birthday festivities on July 4.

Since the deal was signed in early April, the price tag has mysteriously soared from $1.8 million to $13.1 million. Critics say the pool doesn’t need a new coat of paint as much as new pipes, filters and other mechanical improvements to fix chronic problems with water leaks and algae blooms.

Those flaws have been popping up for decades, largely because the pool was built on unstable swampland, which puts severe strain on joints between the granite slabs. A $34 million renovation completed in 2012 helped for a while. But leaks and algae persist, and the pool is now drained and cleaned every year to contain them. In his first presidential term, Trump decided to fix the problem once and for all. The idea was dropped after estimates came in at more than $100 million.

It was perhaps to be expected that an attempt to make a national monument look like a Palm Beach swimming pool would spark controversy. Lawsuits against the project have been filed by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a non-profit preservation organization, and by a group of former Justice Department employees. News commentators have drawn the obvious parallels between Trump’s painting gambit and his other attempts to remake the nation’s capital – with a vast new White House ballroom, for instance, or a 250 ft. high “triumphal arch” not far from the Lincoln Memorial.

But painting the Reflecting Pool blue is a particularly intriguing move for the President. After all, many of the historical events it has seen share a common theme:

• In 1939, African American contralto Marian Anderson, having been denied permission to perform at Washington’s Constitution Hall because of her skin color, held an open-air concert at the pool, drawing more 75,000 people.

• In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of 250,000 people to conclude the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

• In, 1967, more than 100,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters gathered at the pool to begin their March on the Pentagon.

• In 2009, Barack Obama held his “We Are One” presidential inauguration celebration at the pool, drawing a crowd of 400,000 people.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the Lincoln Memorial Pool has for decades been a gathering place for the sort of people Donald Trump does not like. Perhaps painting it “American flag blue” is his idea of nose-thumbing – to their left-of-center causes and their, um... race. The ultimate anti-woke gesture.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is, of course, symbolic of much more -- including the long and productive friendship of a talented sculptor and a great architect, who worked together for half a century until Bacon’s death in 1924 (French died in 1931). Also, the very idea of reflection, with its connotations of deep thought about the legacies of two heroes, Lincoln and Washington, and one very special nation.

Perhaps most of all, the pool is a metaphor for American democracy. The latter was built on the unstable ground of high principle and low politics, and from time to time it needs a little shoring up. But if we the people have learned anything over these 250 years, it’s that our form of government is likely the best, the fairest, the most effective ever attempted. And that a mere paint job won’t fix its occasional cracks.