Reply #7: Been there/not a fan [View All]

[theboss]

But I've liked exactly one new piece of architecture in DC in the last thirty years - The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. I think everything else is kinda crap. And I'm horrified by what the WWII Memorial is likely to end up being.

Anyway, my problems with FDR. 1. Don't like the maze quality. This is the trend that started with the Vietnam Memorial in that you have to "work your way through" it. It works with the wall because it is linear. I felt trapped inside the FDR Memorial. I like the sense of freedom you get inside the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.

2. I hate the color. It is too somber for something praising a great man who saved a nation. (I have the opposite problem with the Holocaust Museum; I think it's too welcoming).

3. Too busy. Did it really need a statue of the dog?

4. The wheelchair. I'm as big an advocate for the disabled as anyway, but there is no way on God's green earth that FDR would have allowed himself to be memorialized in a wheelchair. He would have rubbed an unfiltered Camel out in the sculptor's eye.