For all of you out there who have always thought that the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was a little too modest, a little too plain, and, worst of all, a little too small, here comes the “Arc de Trump,” which is neither modest nor plain. And at 250 feet high, it is emphatically not small. If it is ever built—a possibility that will do nothing to improve either Washington, D.C., as a city or the position of the United States of America on the world stage—it would be the largest triumphal arch in the world.
That, of course, is what the current occupant of the White House wants. It is not, however, what the classical-architecture advocate Catesby Leigh had in mind when he first proposed the idea of an arch beside the Potomac. Leigh, a co-founder of the National Civic Art Society, which has been pushing for more traditional architecture in the nation’s capital and elsewhere, has reportedly now disassociated himself from the project, suggesting that it has gotten rather out of hand as Trump has quadrupled it in size from his original proposal. His discomfort parallels that of James C. McCrery II, the first architect hired to design the new White House “ballroom,” who discovered that what the president had in mind was more along the lines of a convention center tricked up with some classical ornamentation; McCrery, too, has stepped aside.
