When I lived in DC, my favorite monument to visit on the Mall wasn't the Lincoln Memorial, even though it is steeped in visual history. I stood where King stood and looked out, wondering what he was thinking and feeling, but that isn't my most memorable time on the Mall. The Washington Monument provides a stunning view of the entire city, but it hardly qualifies.
Just north of Independence Ave, in a small grove of trees, with a beautiful walkway leading to it, is a small Greek-revival, columned building, the District's Memorial to those who served in World War I. Not a national monument at all, out of the way, shaded, forgotten as those events of nearly a century ago have been forgotten in the rush of later horrors. It was a great place to go and sit with a book. Quite a few Saturday afternoons were spent in the quiet shade of that building.
Now, it seems, the memorial is finally getting a facelift. That's a good thing. Like the war whose dead it memorializes, the building deserves more attention than it has received. Like the war itself, we need, as the centennial of its beginning approaches, to remember it, to remind ourselves that the 20th century began with horrors unimaginable up to that time; overshadowed by the ability of humans to be even more vicious than we had previously realized, we have forgotten how shattering that event was to European civilization and sensibilities. We need to refurbish the building and refurbish our understanding of the beginning of the end of an idea of Europe, an idea that, while full of horror and evil, also strove to be better than it was. That it ended up being far more horrible than it could have conceived is, perhaps, a testimony to the inherent limits and inconsistencies in that idea. That doesn't render those ideas any less noble.
Next time you visit the nation's capital, take a walk down Independence Ave, SW, and you will see it, but you have to look closely. No matter the season, the tree-lined walk is a great photo. Go, and sit, and relax, and remember.
