Assassination Vacation

In 1904, under Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, the architect Daniel Burnham was commissioned to redesign the Mall at Washington, DC. Burnham was inspired by classicism, which refers to the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. Burnham’s plans included making the Mall “an unobstructed open space” (240) and building the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. Burnham joined the United States Commission of Fine Arts, which was established in 1910 and also included the sculptor Daniel Chester French and the architect Cass Gilbert. French and Gilbert also designed a neoclassical New York Custom House, which replaced the old building Chester Arthur knew.

For the neoclassical Custom House, French allegorically represented America with “a European stepping on a Mayan head” (241) and Vowell deems his allegorical depiction of Africa as “similarly questionable” (242). Vowell points out they are more obscure than their contemporaries, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the artist Pablo Picasso. In contrast to French’s neoclassical style depicting the oppression of Indigenous American cultures, Picasso and Wright adapted non-European styles such as those of the Mayans and Africans.

Still, Vowell remarks “with a building as iconic as the Lincoln Memorial, it’s such a given, seems so inevitable, | cannot imagine the Mall without it” (243). Although she agrees with a friend that the memorial seems “fake” and “too perfect” (246), Vowell describes the Lincoln Memorial as her “favorite place in the world and not just in spite of its many stupid flaws”; she appreciates it “partly because of its blankness” (247). Vowell also remarks she is moved by the similarly blank and neoclassical National World War II Memorial.

One day, Vowell learns that a Christian church is holding Easter services on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This leads Vowell to reflect on the fact that “Booth shot Lincoln on Good Friday, the day commemorating Christ’s crucifixion” (248). Vowell decides to attend the service. In the sermon, the pastor talks about the film The Passion of the Christ, which depicts Jesus’s torture and crucifixion.

Easter reminds Vowell of her mother’s favorite hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” Vowell reflects, “I can probably trace this whole morbid assassination death trip” (252) to an album owned by her parents, Buddy Starcher’s History Repeats Itself. In it, Starcher pointed out the similarities between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, such as both presidents having a vice president named Johnson. The list of coincidences is long. Vowell adds several of her own, such as “the ridiculous detail about how Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and then escaped to a warehouse, while Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and then made haste to a theater” (253). As a child, Vowell imagined such “coincidences as minor rest stops on the interstate to doomsday” (254) as orchestrated by God. Even though she is an atheist, such coincidences still fascinate her. She believes it is because they let one believe in order in a chaotic universe.