Congress. How the process has changed since 1789 and the fliinfluence changes. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Authorized by congress in 1999, the dwight d. Eisenhower memorial occupies a fouracre park near the u. S. Capitol across the street from the Smithsonians National air and space museum, up next on american artifacts, a 30minute steuer of the new memorial, and following that, we talk to Washington Post art and architecture, to talk about the debates over the design and to hear his thoughts on the architect and the completed work. Hi. Im victoria tidwell and im the xe executive director of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission and were at the northwest corner of the new president ial memorial for dwight d. Eisenhower and this story starts about a thousand miles west of washington, d. C. In abilene, kansas, and while eisenhower was born in dennison, texas, his family moved back to abilene, kansas, where he was just a toddler and he stayed there through high school. I want to direct your view over here to this speech that is inscribed on this wall in the northwest corner of the memorial. When world war ii ended, eisenhower came home to abilene and was given a heros welcome, and in a very humble way he started talking about not that he was a hero, but what he dreamed of doing when he was a young boy in abilene, kansas, and ended with the proudest thing that i can claim is that i am from abilene. I come here first to thank you, to say the proudest thing i can claim is that i am from abilene. [ cheers and applause ] that first paragraph of that speech was a primary inspiration for the designer of the memorial, frank gary, and hes expressed that here in this statue of Young Eisenhower as a teenage boy sitting on a stone block, looking in the direction of two of his greatest accomplishments, president of the United States and Supreme Commander of the allied expeditionary forces. The stone comes from spain. Its all of the stone in the memorial is ambar life stone and he sits here. He was cast life size and he was sculpted in italy by the sculptor sergei bekoff and there are 13 sculptures and sergei has done all of them. Young ike was just recently installed in may. Theres a photograph of eisenhower, teenage boy, wearing some dungarees with a bunch of friends just sitting there like i think they were camping is what they were actually doing and that was the photo that kept coming back up to the front when gary was looking for the photo that he wanted to encapsulate this young man, and one of the things we found as we went through the review agency processes was that everybody really liked that you had a kid memorialized here, that for a young person to come to a memorial and see heroic size 9foot skull aculptures th massive and theyre four feet tall. Were hoping when they come here they can see someone his size and wonder, i wonder how he did that . And it will spark eisenhower and his youth and later his career. You probably could not find a site in washington, d. C. That is more suited for Dwight Eisenhower to have a memorial. This square is surrounded by health and Human Services which used to be called Health Education and welfare which was started during the Eisenhower Administration and then behind you, you have the department of education again, formerly hew that started during the Eisenhower Administration. The federal aviation administration, again, during the Eisenhower Administration and the jewel in the crown, if you will, the air and space museum and of course, nasa which began during the Eisenhower Administration. So its perfectly suited for ike. As we walk into the memorial from this corner, we have a column here that has the five stars which was, of course, the insignia for generaliz eisenhow and other generals during world war ii, when the legislation was passed in 1999 that created the eisenhower commission, unique to this president ial memorial was the fact that it called for him to be recognized not only as the 34th president of the United States, but the supreme allied commander of the European Expeditionary force. This column which is 10 1 2 feet in diameter and is clad once again in the same limestone anbar from spain then recognizes this role that he had as the fivestar general and commander of all of the forces in europe in world war ii. There are eight giant columns on this site, two of them anchor the corners of this site and theyre freestanding and this one in recognition of the general and the one on the far opposite corner which has a profile of eisenhower from the Silver Dollar, the Silver Dollar profile that everyone has probably seen and is also the first inaugural coin that then says 34th president of the United States. And the other six columns support the tapestry and we can talk about them in a little bit. Right now were walking into the center of the memorial and the memorial is in the center of a fouracre park. In this part of d. C. , there are a lot of government buildings and the mall is a block to the north and so this is really giving people who live and work in d. C. And who come here as tourists a nice, cooling place to sit down and get off their feet and have a bottle of water, just relax and then when theyre ready, proceed into what the center of the memorial is which is the contemplative area. While were here in this spot, we should stop for a minute and look at the view of the capital. We are in the middle of maryland avenue, maryland avenue and pennsylvania avenue were sister avenues in the plan for d. C. , and preserving them in their original intent was very important. Pennsylvania avenue was developed with a little more discipline than maryland avenue was. When you look, the intent was from the capitol you could look all of the way to the potomac down maryland avenue and you could look from the capitol all of the way to the white house down pennsylvania avenue. Well, that didnt quite happen in maryland avenue. It wasnt the building lines werent regular as they are on pennsylvania avenue and preserving the original cartway and the la font plan was important and gary has done this in a green way which is a different kind of grass than you see on the side and its a mowed grass and theres a granite strip that commemorates the original maryland avenue as designed by font, and its frankly, one of the few places in the city where you can stand in the middle of a street and not get hit by a car and enjoy the view of the capitol both in daytime and nighttime. So now were entering the center of the memorial, and this is really the contemplative area, and this is the place where were hoping youll stop and think about eisenhower and learn a little bit more about him. There are audio tours that are podcasts wherever you get your podcasts that will tell you in depth what you are seeing and the idea behind it. Theres an interview with the designer frank gary and he talks a lot about the tapestry and then youll understand garys concept and how he eventually developed this memorial. Over here we have the recognition of eisenhower as supreme allied commander. This sculpture or grouping is inspired by a very famous photo that was taken on the eve of dday. And the 101st airborne and he chose that group to speak to it because it was anticipated that they could have a 70 or higher casualty rate. So he went out there, he found some of the 101st airborne, the story goes, he wanted to know if anybody was from kansas, and one of the these soldiers do not represent any particular people, but some of the original soldiers were in the group say hes holding his hand that way because he was talking about fly fishing. Maybe true, maybe not true, but thats the story. So youll notice these paratroopers and all of the gear that they had to have with them when they jumped had to be strapped to their bodies and so they have these youll see straps going around and some of them hauled ammunition and some of them hauled the things they would need to survive because they were being dropped behind the lines and theres eisenhower with the very famous eisenhower jacket which was that shorter cutoff at the waist. The other thing i want you to look at is how young some of these soldiers are. The two on the outside of this grouping of four look very young and its a reminder that these soldiers that were going on the invasion the next day, a lot of them were just kids, and so thats reflected here in this sculpture, and then behind them theres a bar relief thats 15 feet high and 35 feet long, and on that is carved an approach to normandy. So youll see on the top right the normandy coastline, the cliffs there. Remember, the americans were going in at omaha and utah beaches and omaha had some very high bluffs that they had to overcome, and then you will see some of the landing crafts approaching. So this also was done by the sculptor sergei beckoff and it was done in pietra santa, italy and it also is spanish limestone anbar. And then theres a giant lentel that sits a skew on top of the bar relief and that message is from the dday address that every soldier airman and seaman was given on dday and this is one of the very famous sentences from it. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching to victory. These sculptures were produced in ppietra santa, ital, using the same method that theyve been producing sculptures there for centuries and thats called the lost wax process. The sculptor makes a clay model and the clay model is covered in kind of a wax and then the wax is cut into pieces off the clay model, and a hard a hard plaster is put around the wax model to keep it from moving to stabilize it, and then that goes off to the foundry, and the foundry takes that wax impression of the statues and creates another wax impression using a very, very hard black wax. That black wax is then encased in another form of slurry, like a ceramic slurry, both inside and outside. That goes into an oven and the temperature is turned up and the wax melts out and into that space the hot bronze is poured, and thats where the statues then absolutely resechl bell the first wax impression that was made. And its done in pieces, various pieces and not all at once and then theyre reassembled. These all shipped here. They took about a month at sea in a container ask then they were installed with rock which are embedded into the stone and concrete base. See now well walk over here and see the president ial side. People often think they talk. It like tts a rank will time. Europe was ravabled as a result of world war ii, communism was spreading. Eisenhower had just left to run for president being the First Military commander of nato, and he was trying to unify the military forces there so they could prevent another war from breaking out in that part of europe. So eisenhowers approached about running for president and hes not really interested in politics. Hes never voted. He doesnt think military people should be partisan, and the republicans visit him and hes hesitant about running, but hes also worried that americas going to slip back into isolationism. So he agrees to run. In fact, hes a writein candidate in some states. Hes a draft candidate in others. He goes into the Republican Convention with most people believing taft was going to win, and he emerges with the republican nomination, and so hes now presiding over an america in a time when the korean war is going on, as i said before, the 50s were actually a very dangerous time in the world, very unstable. Europe was trying to reunify and rebuild. Eisenhower came into office and ended the korean war and then really went about building on the postworld war ii economic recovery of america. He thought americans were exhausted. They needed peace and prosperity, but that was not just going to happen. That would only happen if america was strong and so he started building up and keeping them a Permanent Military establishment. So in this imagery here, you see eisenhower and three aides. One is a military aide and two are civilian aides and this is again to remind us that eisenhower always had to hold intention. Peace and freedom, but yet the power for america to defend itself and its allies, and he said it in an interview at the end of his time as president that not one soldier was lost in battle, not one foot of land was lost in war, and that that didnt just happen, and many people again, think that we just cruised through the 50s, but the 50s were a very dangerous time and eisenhower oversaw america as it really emerged into being the world leader that it now was, from where it had been prior to world war ii. So yeah, the military adviser again representing americas permanent role in the world and here you have two civilian advisors one of whom is an africanamerican and eisenhower is often overlooked in the civil rights struggle and while he was president he enacted the first civil rights legislation since reconstruction. He also desessigregated the district of columbia and he completed what truman began as the desegregation of the military, and another interesting factor that ties these two sides together is after the brown versus the board of education decision in arkansas in little rock, they were refusing to carry through with the order to integrate the schools and eisenhower brought the 101st airborne, not the same people, but the same unit you see depicted there to little rock to enforce the law. And thats what this sculptural grouping is representing, and behind them we have a map of the world. And that is to represent eisenhowers international standing. He lived in panama. He lived in the philippines. He lived in england. He was the postwar governor of europe. Eisenhower probably understood the world outside of the United States better than any president weve had and part of that was due to his military career. And then at this lintel which sits es cue, we have an exexcerpt from his second inaugural address, we look upon this shaken earth and declare our firm and fixed purpose, justice in a world where moral law prevails. On the back of both of these blocks are some of the texts from eisenhowers more powerful speeches that he gave. On the back of the president ial block we have an excerpt from his first inaugural address. And next to it we have what most people probably remember about eisenhowers speeches which is the farewell address. We put it here in almost its entire context so people can read what he said about the military industrial establishment and they can decide for himself what he was really meaning by that. His farewell address is very similar to the kind of farewell address that washington gave when he left office. And doing that was inspired by eisenhower was inspired by washingtons farewell address to do that. Well walk over here to the back of the general side which had the guild address on it. It was a speech that eisenhower gave when he was given free range of the city to london which we would call the key to the city. Its a very poignant address. It talks it begins by saying humanity must be the push of any man whose fame is earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends. Its beautiful and humble. He went onto talk about the suffering that mothers and wives and children had because they didnt have husbands or fathers returning. So thats on the back here. There are 4,600 hardcarved letters on the back of these both of these blocks. We move back now along independence avenue so we can get a full view of the most distinctive feature of the eisenhower memorial which is this massive tapestry. This tapestry consists of 600 panels of woven, stainless steel cable representing a design which in this case is normandy, france. Originally, garys image for this was a landscape from kansas. As the design evolved, the image on the tapestry evolved as well. We took some photos with a drone of the normandy coastline, but it didnt translate to this medium very well. So frank gehry sat down and cdrw it and this sketch is whats represented on the tapestry. Each panel has some small fine wire, three lairs of it in Different Directions and on top of that is an art wire thicker, heavier art wire. Sometimes as many as six layers which creates the design. If you go to the website, theres an interview with the man who came up with the methodology to create this and mass produce these panels. Our very first sample took three months to produce. Obviously we couldnt make 600 panels if each one took three months. And thomas was the one who figured it out. Lets walk a little bit closer to it. And you can see the design as we get closer. The whole tapestry is underlit at night and it comes on about dusk and as you can see, its the wires kind of glow. One of the interesting things about this tapestry, it looks different no matter every time of day when you come here. If its a sunny day, an overcast day, sometimes it just serves as a screen between the department of education and the memorial. You cant really tell the design. Other times the sun glints off it. Its every time you visit this memorial, youll see Something Different on that tapestry. There are five beams that support the tapestry and hold it in place. And there are six columns. Those columns on the end are doing all the work of holding the tapestry in tension. When we went by the two columns, the column on the northwest corner and theres a column on the northeast corner, they are the size they are because these columns were designed to support the tapestry. And they are the same size for that purpose. We can walk around behind the back and see how it looks because its some of the panels have the art wires on the front and some of the panels have the art wires on the back. In the daytime, this reads really well with the blue sky behind it. In fact, sometimes its invisible from the other side. But here the wires are look black because theyre lit from the backside. Its like an entirely different tapestry from this side. From the time this was an idea, how long has it taken for this memorial to get here . The commission was the legislation for the commission was passed in 1999. There are four senators, four members of the house of representatives and hour president ial appointees equally balanced republicans and democrats. Over the years, people hav