WASHINGTON – For years, Jersey barriers, dump trucks and mud dominated. There were proposals for bollards, walls and even a moat. This holiday weekend, though, the nation’s capital will get its first look at a monument permanently fortified against a terrorist attack on the Mall.
The defenses will not be obvious. Fourth of July revelers who stop to rest on curving, low-slung granite walls that encircle the Washington Monument will be sitting on a $15 million security project.
“If people look at it and say, ‘Gee, it looks like it’s always been here,’ or if they say, ‘Where is it? What did they do? I don’t see anything,’ then we did it right,” said project manager Allan Spulecki, who was on the monument grounds Thursday, dodging front loaders, backhoes and tractors to inspect some last-minute touches on the work site.
The primary feature of the project is a series of interlocking rings of ash-rose granite wall, standing just 30 inches above the ground. They reach deep enough into the ground and overlap at just the right points to stop an explosive-laden Humvee.
The walls are augmented by retractable posts that can be lowered for maintenance vehicles at four entrances. Atop the mound of earth that is the pedestal for the monument, solid benches of Georgia white marble surround the plaza. To lend some aesthetic beauty, lighting has been installed to better highlight the geometry and stones of the monument, Spulecki said.
The subtlety of the design is its triumph, said Thomas Luebke, secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, one of the groups that had to approve the design.
“Part of the issue in these security measures is a philosophical debate. This is supposed to be a free and open society. Do we want these precious monuments to look embattled?” Luebke asked. “The Washington Monument doesn’t, and it’s a tribute to the design of the project.”
The monument was reopened in April, and the rest of the grounds will be open by Monday, said National Park Service spokesman Bill Line.
“With this design, people can walk up, they can bicycle up to the monument,” Line said. “But nobody’s going to be able to drive up to it.”
The project was finished on time and on budget at $15 million, Line said.
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