Washington, D.C.'s Pershing Park, named for the famed World War I general, may finally get a new memorial.
The nonprofit World War One Centennial Commission is currently working to secure $35 million in funding and D.C. officials’ approval to build a new memorial at the park on 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
“There's an element of sacredness that's being brought to the project because it becomes a memorial,” said Sabin Howard, who is part of the design team for the memorial.
Howard, a New York-based sculptor, worked in collaboration with 25-year-old architect Joseph Weishaar, of Chicago, to design the park. Their design, entitled “The Weight of Sacrifice,” was selected out of over 350 entries during a design competition in January.
“How are you going to tell the story of World War I in a way that people are going to get viscerally excited and go home and want to know more about it?” Howard said.
To answer that question, Howard and Weishaar designed a 75-foot long, 7-foot-high wall that would tell the story of the thousands Americans who left families behind to fight in World War I. Howard and Weishaar have been using real-life models to build the “relief wall” which would replace the reflecting pool currently in the park.
“We have to create something that really commemorates the war,” said Weishaar. “It’s starting to slip a little bit from public consciousness.”
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The redesign would also bring the 2-acre park to street level to invite people in and is intended to open in 2018, 100 years after the United States entered the war.
