00:00The nation's capital has a few nicknames, the district, the swamp, but it's also the city of monuments, memorializing the
00:08fallen, commemorating conflict, and preserving past presidents in stone.
00:12When you look at government architecture and people building monuments or associations or foundations or buildings that are literal foundations,
00:20what are they mostly for?
00:22Well, they stand for people, they stand for places, they stand for significant moments in history.
00:29Chris and Capps covers architecture for CityLab at Bloomberg.
00:32He took us to the site of a potential new addition to D.C.'s landscape, the proposed Trump Triumphal Arch.
00:38It's quite beautiful, as you can see, and this monumental arc will beam at 250 feet tall.
00:45The edifice would sit at this grassy patch in the middle of a traffic circle at the end of Memorial
00:49Bridge.
00:50This is where the arch will go.
00:51And it's going to be how high?
00:53250 feet tall.
00:55How tall is that?
00:56The Lincoln Memorial is about 100 feet tall, so it's going to be two and a half times that.
01:00So they want it to be taller than the Lincoln Memorial?
01:02Much taller.
01:03Much taller than almost any structure in Washington.
01:06The monument, colloquially called Arc de Trump, has already raised protests from veterans groups, who say it will destroy the
01:13line of sight across the bridge.
01:15Memorial Circle is open for a reason.
01:17This is a site that stands between the Arlington House, which is Robert E. Lee's former home, and the Lincoln
01:25Memorial, which is, of course, the memorial, the monument to Abraham Lincoln.
01:29So it's a symbolic bridge.
01:32It represents the reunion of the country after the Civil War.
01:38And, you know, the detractors of the arch say that it would just stand between that symbolic unity.
01:45You're supposed to be able to see from one down to the other.
01:48You're supposed to be able to see from one down to the other.
01:50Now, the arch is going to be so big that the design rendering show that you could actually see Arlington
01:57House and the Lincoln Memorial from under it.
02:00Okay.
02:00But I don't know that that necessarily means it's not an occluded, blocked view.
02:06When asked, the president seemed unconcerned.
02:09That circle has sat there vacant for hundreds, like 150 years or something.
02:15The veterans are the ones that should like it.
02:16It's called the triumphal arc.
02:18It's in honor of the veterans.
02:20And this isn't the only place the current president is leaving his mark, or his name.
02:24From the Kennedy Center.
02:26When did this go up, Kristen?
02:27This was a real surprise when this went up.
02:29It just kind of happened overnight.
02:31There was no act of Congress.
02:33There was no announcement.
02:33And it's above.
02:34It's above Kennedy's name on the Kennedy Memorial.
02:38To the former U.S. Institute of Peace.
02:40Did they stick on the letters?
02:42They did, yes.
02:42This happened in December.
02:45It's now, I think, technically the Board of Peace, a slightly different organization.
02:50From an aesthetic architecture perspective, why do people put their names on things?
02:54And is that something you typically see in a democratic society?
02:56It's surely not the case that U.S. presidents go and just put their names on buildings that
03:02they like or want to have some association with.
03:04Is there another president you can think of who has pushed through this many physical changes
03:09in Washington in recent memory?
03:10No.
03:11It's really interesting.
03:12You know, if you look back, the changes have been so sudden.
03:15You have to really go back to the era of LBJ and great society.
03:20There's also the demolition of the historic White House East Wing to make way for a ballroom,
03:25paving over the Rose Garden lawn into a patio, and gold embossed everything.
03:30There's a lot of gold lettering happening at the White House these days.
03:33Is that, what style is that?
03:34Is that neoclassical?
03:35Is that, is that early Mar-a-Lago?
03:38Does it have a name?
03:38I think Mar-a-Lago might be closer than possible.
03:41Okay, all right.
03:42The White House says the ballroom will be paid for by private funds.
03:45The funding for some of the other projects, including the Arch, is still unclear.
03:50What's also unclear is how many of these alterations will be completed before the president leaves
03:55office or endure after he's gone.
03:58We're getting kicked out.
03:59They didn't put Trump on the security truck.
04:02Oh, yeah.
04:04You want to get that?
04:05It's not on the truck.
04:08And props to our crew who managed to get the shot, while who you don't see is the security
04:12guard almost immediately to his left there talking to us.
04:16We got one shot at that.
04:17We got about 30 seconds up there before they immediately shoomp, and we're like, you gotta
04:21go.
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