Trump's Triumphal Arch Would Cast a Shadow Over 75,000 Arlington Graves and JFK's Eternal Flame, a Model Finds
A Washington Post 3D model of President Trump's proposed 250-foot triumphal arch at Memorial Circle found its shadow would cross Arlington National Cemetery on 284 days a year - reaching John F. Kennedy's grave in spring and summer. The Interior Department calls the analysis flawed and says its own modeling shows a far smaller effect.
President Donald Trump's proposed 250-foot triumphal arch would cast a shadow over presidential memorials, war monuments and thousands of graves each year, according to a digital 3D model created by The Washington Post and reported Tuesday and Wednesday. The arch is planned for a traffic circle at Memorial Circle, between Washington and Arlington, at the edge of Arlington Memorial Bridge, and the National Capital Planning Commission is set to consider final approval on November 5; construction could start that day pending approval, The Washington Sun reported.
The Post's model found the arch's shadow would cover burial sites at Arlington National Cemetery on 284 days each year and pass over more than 75,000 graves in total. The shadow would recede before the cemetery opens on most days but would linger during operating hours on 26 days. In spring and summer it would fall on John F. Kennedy's grave - on May 12, one of the longest-shadow days the Post examined, the Kennedy Eternal Flame would be obstructed from the sun for nine minutes and the Military Women's Memorial would sit in darkness for 22 minutes, while the shadow crossed the graves of Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall and William H. Rehnquist and stayed on the cemetery grounds for more than an hour, covering more than 2,000 burial sites, People reported from the same analysis. The Post also found the shadow would cross Arlington Memorial Bridge and linger over the Lincoln Memorial in fall and winter, and would fall on parts of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on more than 30 days a year and at times cover the Vietnam and Korean war memorials.
The Interior Department disputes the findings. It called the Post's analysis "flawed" in a statement to The Washington Sun, saying its own internal modeling is more reliable: the project's design team ran its own solar models and found a period of less than two weeks, at the beginning of daylight saving time, when the arch's shadow would fall over a portion of the cemetery while it is open. Interior said it studied the shadow at 8 a.m., 9 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. on a handful of days through the year; the Post analyzed the shadow on every day of the year, including times when the cemetery is closed to the public. The National Park Service has previously outlined dozens of historic sites the arch would affect but said the project should move forward, and declined to consider alternate locations, calling the site central to the undertaking.
The monument - nicknamed the "Arc de Trump" - has drawn legal challenges beyond the shadow question. Three Vietnam War veterans have sued, arguing among other things that construction would obstruct the view of Arlington National Cemetery; Arlington County sued earlier this month, arguing the administration failed to complete a legally required environmental review; and preservation officials have said officials underestimated how much the affected historic properties would be diminished. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, whose parents are buried at Arlington, told the Post the shadow would fall on families visiting loved ones and called the project "a sacrilege." Per the plans to be submitted by Interior, the arch itself would carry an eternal flame of its own, in the form of a gold statue holding a torch. The November 5 commission vote decides whether the project proceeds.
