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).