WASHINGTON — The 250-foot triumphal arch rising beside the Potomac will be ready to start being controversial on schedule, with administration lawyers telling a federal court this month that construction could commence as early as November 5.
The date surprised no one who has been paying attention, and surprised everyone who was.
Plaintiffs suing to stop the project asked a judge on Thursday to halt the work before it begins, arguing the arch has not cleared every legal hurdle. The administration’s position, stated plainly in the filing, is that the arch has cleared the hurdles it intends to clear, and that November 5 is a Tuesday with good light.
The critics have many questions, and all of them come from a small group of people who watched the arch’s renderings and sighed. The project’s champions note that the arch will stand more than twice as tall as the Arc de Triomphe, will feature gilded bronze figures and an eternal flame, and — in the detail that has moved the most suburban voters — will include elevators.
“There was a time an arch meant you had to walk,” said Dale Hutchins, a precinct chair in Prince William County who drove two hours to view a rendering displayed at a Home Depot. “My mother’s eighty-one. An arch she can’t get up is an arch she can’t love. They thought about the elevators. That’s what a monument should be — thought about.”
The lawsuits, the environmental review, the two separate lawsuits: none of it has slowed the arch, because none of it was ever the point. The point is the 250th anniversary, and the anniversary is in July, and July does not negotiate with paperwork.
Some of the opposition has been specific. The National Park Service has been asked to address whether a 250-foot structure in the flight path of Reagan National Airport affects landings; whether the noise of building it disturbs the funerals at the cemetery across the river; whether the height of anything on the Mall is limited at all, or merely limited by tradition, which is a kind of permission slip that expires.
The answer to every question, so far, has been November 5.
And the skeptics’ loudest objection — that the arch will block the view down the Mall — mistakes what a view is for. A view is a long empty nothing. The arch is the first thing in a century to put something in the middle of it, and the middle is where the country keeps its things.
THE ARCH AT A GLANCE: OFFICIAL SPECIFICATIONS
- Height: 250 feet, which is twice the Arc de Triomphe plus one America
- Elevators: yes, finally
- Gilded bronze figures: yes, at the base, where bronze people usually are
- Eternal flame: yes, certified eternal by the same office that certified the century
- Estimated cost: $100 million, an estimate the architects describe as "a number for now"
- Groundbreaking: November 5, pending any reason not to
At $100 million, Hutchins said, it is the cheapest thing the federal government has ever done twice. He was referring to the anniversary. He was not asked about the arch.