A Close Look at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial jlee Thu, 06/13/2019 - 11:43
Video Overview

Historian Christopher Hamner leads teachers through a close examination of the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in Washington, DC. Just like a document or photograph, Hamner says, monuments and memorials reward questioning and analysis.

Video Clip Name
Grant1.mov
Grant2.mov
Grant3.mov
Grant4.mov
Video Clip Title
An Unusual Realism
Heroic Charge or Disaster?
Grant's Strategy
Grant in the Memorial
Video Clip Duration
7:44
4:59
4:44
4:55
Transcript Text

Christopher Hamner: We're going to look at a couple of monuments today, and I want to approach it from this idea of what is it telling us about the moment and the way that Americans are struggling with their memory of a particular event. Think about the Mall. There will be a thousand people passing through Air and Space between 9am and 9:10 this morning; so in 10 minutes, that's a career's worth of people who may be getting all their history out of just going through those exhibits. The World War II Memorial, which we're going to visit in the afternoon, gets 4.4 million people per year. So in terms of shaping the way people think about events and history, this is really powerful stuff. And I think it's important to think about, well, who made this? And what did they make it for? And what were the circumstances under which this was put up and why does it look the way it looks? For my money, the one that we're going to look at first is the single best, most interesting, most fascinating memorial in the entire city. It's the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. What makes it so interesting is that you can walk past it and only get a tiny, tiny piece of what's going on. You have to really study…you have to spend a little time kind of engaging the monument to kind of get the full experience. And one of the thinks that's so cool [is] that you can talk about it as a piece of history [and] you can also talk about it as a piece of art. And this is one of the neater sculptures, both on this side and on the other side. The sculpture is so well done that if you walk around it, it almost seems to move. You see different things at different spots as you kind of make the semicircle. So maybe we should start there. Just kind of start here—and just like we've been talking about, you know, images, music, all sorts of things that you can read closely—look closely for the detail and try to figure out what's going on here. Teacher 1: He's riding one of the horses. Each one. Teacher 2: There's two riders. Teacher 3: Are they both shot? It looks like this guy's shot over here; he's shot here. This guy's avoiding being shot just like these guys, they're ducking, they're using them as shields. Christopher Hamner: Alright, if you just look at it—if you're just standing here for example and you just take the most cursory look at it what does it look like? If you only spend 40 seconds like most tourists, you take a shot from here and you move on, what do you get out of it? Teacher 4: It's a wagon, going from one place to another. It's moving. Christopher Hamner: It's kind of the heroic—it looks like a standard—you've got the horses rearing back, it's soldiers, it's kind of heroic, there's a guy leaning back, he's got the U.S. artillery flag. It looks like a pretty standard war memorial. When you take a little more time to look at it, what's going on? What is it, first of all? We've got a bunch of guys on horses— Multiple Teachers: It's artillery. Christopher Hamner: It's horse-drawn artillery, it's got an artillery caisson, it appears to be moving up to the front someplace. Everybody got that, right? What's going on? Teacher 5: They're stuck in the mud. Teacher 6: They're under fire. Teacher 7: Yeah, they're in battle. Teacher 5: I got stuck in the mud and cold, suffering. Teacher 8: And this guy looks like he's getting shot. And it looks like they're avoiding being shot. Christopher Hamner: Okay, that's one way to interpret it. One thing, if they were close enough to the front that they were taking fire the battery would probably be disengaged and wheeled in. So it would be rare to get that close. But everybody's kind of gotten the sense that it's in the process of crashing. Right? Let's go around to the other side. What's happening over here? Teacher 9: From this side you can definitely tell that it's more tilted, the part where they're sitting. Christopher Hamner: Okay, so. Teacher 5: The axle is breaking. Christopher Hamner: The axle is snapping; you can see the slack in the tackle there. But notice there's a lot of slack here, they're rearing up, it's in the process of crashing. I mean look at the wheels are akimbo. I think what's happening here is not that these guys are getting shot but, the horses have reared, it's just at this moment—it's full of energy, it's just at this moment where it's about to crash. These guys, I don't know if they're ducking fire of if they're just tired in the back. Especially this guy on the right, I mean, that is just exhaustion in his face. These guys have been towing this thing around for months or years. But they're not even aware that in four tenths of a second the momentum of the artillery case is going to carry them into this huge mess of horseflesh. And these guys are trying to rein in the damage. But, this is a picture of a crash about to happen. Think of how different that is from what you would normally see in a heroic military monument. This isn't a tribute to efficiency, or a tribute to the sheer power of the army, so much as a honest portrayal of how easy it is for things to go wrong. I especially like the guys riding in the back, just the exhaustion there. And think about how atypical that is for a military monument. When do you think this was put up? Teacher 10: After Grant died. Christopher Hamner: Yes! When? So that would cover roughly 130 years. Teacher 10: I was thinking post-World War I. Christopher Hamner: Good! I like that. Post-World War I is a good guess, why? Teacher 10: Because we struggled with modern warfare there and lots of people came home, and Veterans Affairs was formed. Christopher Hamner: That is a great guess, but not correct. That's what's interesting about this. This is pre-First World War by like 20 years, which is really kind of unusual when you think of all the other Civil War statues that we've looked at. We looked at Stonewall Jackson, you know, superhero, Superman, steroids, muscles bulging—that's much more traditional, that's sort of heroic, he looks indestructible, he looks incredibly powerful. This is not indestructible. Teacher: On the right, on the back he's got both of his hands bracing him on the other side like he's getting ready— Christopher Hamner: This is kind of the sense of energy…there's nothing that these guys can do. This is going to go very badly for them in a second or two. And there's a kind of resignation and exhaustion and a realism that is really unusual. You don't normally see a country putting up a military monument that depicts a crash and I think it says something kind of interesting about where the nation was 25 years after the Civil War when they started putting this up. How do we want to remember this event? What are we going to put up? What are we going to show? How are we going to show it? Teacher: Maybe like you were saying, when you really look at war and teach it you should look at the tough side of it and don't glorify it. Like you were saying, it was a struggle, it broke our country apart. Christopher Hamner: I think that's exactly where we're going with this, there's even more interesting stuff on the other side. But think about how unusual that is. And it will become, I think, even clearer as we get to World War II, which does not have this kind of gritty realism to it.

Christopher Hamner: What's the kind of tone of the memorial? Teacher 1: Charge! Teacher 2: The cavalry is making a charge. Christopher Hamner: It's a cavalry charge and it's kind of got those iconic touches: there's the captain in front, he's got his saber up, and they're pointing forward, and there's flags streaming and there's muscles rippling in the horses. It kind of feels like a traditional, heroic celebration. What's going on when you look at it more carefully? Teacher 3: This guy on the side here he's shielding his face. This guy is about to get his day ruined. Christopher Hamner: What's happened to this guy? Teacher 3: His horse is down. Christopher Hamner: His horse has either been hit or has tripped. What is about to happen, what is the story that's going to unfold here? Teacher 4: It's going to be a domino effect. Christopher Hamner: There's a cascade of—the guys in the back are totally unaware of what's happened in front. And the officer leading the charge has got this heroic pose and a heroic look on his face, but is oblivious to the fact that this is, like the other one, kind of in the process of falling apart. What's gonna happen to this guy? Teacher 4: He's going to have his head stepped on. Christopher Hamner: There's a pretty good chance he's gonna be trampled because the horses are going to be unable to stop. That is supposed to represent Shrady, the sculptor, in fact, the face is modeled after his face, which is a kind of odd touch. He didn't live to see the entire thing cast and commissioned. But you've got the same kind of sense that there's energy coming, but if you look closely there is the beginnings of a sort of disaster happening. You have to look for it. If you just step back and say oh, standard cavalry charge, it looks a lot like the heroic monuments you would see at Gettysburg or Antietam; look more carefully and it's kind of brutal realism. Not everybody—the charges didn't always work, the horses fell down. What's going on on the ground in both of them? There's like mud in motion. How many monuments do you recall seeing where there's so much attention to the ground and how nasty—I mean, there's a chopped-down tree trunk on the other side. It recognizes that these Civil War battles didn't happen on a manicured golf course, that they happened in really nasty conditions and there's—it's all in motion too, it's mud that's being kicked up. It's kind of a dirtier, grittier, more realistic version of warfare. This is pre-World War I, and this is really, really different. If you look at most statues of generals, particularly from the Civil War, or a statue of Washington, they're turned out in their general regalia, their officers coats, and their insignia, standing erect and their chests are out—it’s a heroic celebration. This is something different. You get a little bit of that in the front, but it's kind of got this ironic twist in that this glorious charge that he's leading is about to meet with a sort of disastrous end. Teacher 5: I was noticing a few of the other elements that usually you don't see in statues. As you mentioned the mud and the tree back there, but look at the horses' mouths. About three or four of the horses they're exhausted, the tongues are hanging out, especially the one on the far side here. The one on the near side has a wide-open mouth. So they've been charging for a while, this isn't automatically happening, you know, we're not just starting it. Christopher Hamner: That one sort of looks terrified, too. In the horses and on the artillery side there's a sense that they're portraying the fear, which is a real part of the experience, that again you don't normally see. What do you think that the people who put this up, who donated money to it, who designed it, who cast it, who erected it—how do they want you to think about the war? Teacher 6: A more realistic view. Which is kind of before their time. Teacher 7: It's certainly—for me, I'm trying to contextualize it within the end of the Gilded Age and the beginning of imperialism and I'm trying to make sense of it and it doesn't jive with my preconceived notions of what to expect out of a monument during that time. They were in to stuff that was grandiose and heroic; and this is heroic in a very raw way. It's not— Teacherr 5: Raw. Raw, I like that word. Christopher Hamner: If—this should have been erected in 1918 or 1919, right? That would fit in with the narrative of how we understand that people kind of gave up their glorious view of warfare and adapted a more realistic tone. But it doesn't.

Christopher Hamner: Turn around and take a look at U.S. Grant up there. There's some interesting stuff going on with the depiction of Grant, just the way he's portrayed. But there's also the relationship between the two lower pieces, the cavalry on this side and the artillery on the south side and where Grant is located. What do you know about—what is your sort of thumbnail understanding of Grant as a Civil War general. This is after his presidency, which is generally regarded as something of a disappointment. So he's depicted here in his more successful incarnation as a general. You can kind of work backwards from there and one of the reasons that Grant accepted the surrender is that he was the victorious general, he is the general after that incredibly torturous process of trial and error, plugging these guys in and we cover this a little bit in the summer, that there was this revolving parade of generals who had been disastrous—you know, Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, these guys who just could not get it done. And then in the summer of 1863 Grant distinguishes himself at Vicksburg, comes west, and it's Grant who is the head of the armies in the last two years of the war. And who finally grinds down the army of Northern Virginia and forces its surrender. How does he do that? Teacher 1: He picked up on the war of attrition. Christopher Hamner: The thing that Grant did differently that none of the generals previous to him did—So many of those generals were about maneuver and about trying to get behind Lee's army or trying to get between Lee's army and Richmond and trying to win the war without fighting a really bloody battle. Grant was one of the first to embrace a more modern sensibility that said you cannot win a war in this day by capturing the enemy capital, you have to win the war by destroying the enemy army and they only way you can do that is by meeting it on the battlefield and fighting it. Remember the Union had that huge advantage in its, the manpower pool it could draw on, its productive capacity; and the South didn't. The South had a much smaller population and they had much less capacity to produce ammunition and weapons. What had happened in the first two years of the war in a general way is that there that would be a big battle and both armies would kind of pull back. That allowed the South to keep fighting for a long time. Grant is the first commanding officer who really understood that they were going to have to fight them and keep fighting them. Remember when we did the campaigns of 1864; there is just horribly bloody battle after horribly bloody battle from May to July of 1864. They are fighting a massive, deadly engagement every couple of days, this is the Wilderness qne Spotsylvania Courthouse. There were more than 60,000 Union causalities in a six-week period during that point. That’s—they're fighting a major battle every couple of days. Remember, we were talking about the bottom-up experience, what it's like not just to be a soldier, but to be the wife of a soldier, or the mother of a soldier, someone on the home front, and imagine what it's like to get that newspaper every other day and to flip right to the back page, which was called the "Butcher's Bill," and to read over the individual names and be praying that it's not your loved one that's going to be listed there. And that's kind of an interesting contrast to our 20th-century experience. We do a lot of the same things today, but in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts four deaths in a day is a horrible tragedy—and it is—but imagine that there are 400 deaths every day and that it just keeps going on and that there are 4,000 deaths some day. It's a kind of warfare that reaches into Union homes, homes in the North, in a way that was really unprecedented. Grant was extraordinarily unpopular. They began to get a real kind of respect for Grant—who was the total antithesis of a lot of the generals they had had before. McClellan was a little Napoleon, he was always very turned out in polished brass and very much looked the part of a general. You can see that Grant doesn't. A lot of the soldiers saw him as someone that was more relatable. At the same time this is a guy who's continually plunging them into battle. In the spring of 1864 it's not at all clear that that's going to have a successful conclusion.

Christopher Hamner: What's coming across here about him as a general? What is the tone or what adjectives would you use to describe how he's being portrayed. Teacher 1: Alone. Christopher Hamner: Where do you get that? Teacher 1: Well, obviously there's no one else up there with him. You just see the sight of him looking straight, he's in his own thoughts, his own world, he's battling the elements, the wind is blowing past him, the horse's tail is swept; yet he's going to stand fast, like he's determined to have whatever he has in his mind fulfilled. Christopher Hamner: There's like three or four things we can dig into there. First in terms of him being alone, look at how separate he is from the troops that he's leading. He is, what is that, 30 feet? Maybe more? He is physically separated from them; he is also 30 feet above them. He's away from them on this axis and also on the vertical axis. Teacher 2: He could theoretically have been placed in one side or the other in terms of the way that they portray him in his dress. Teacher 3: All of these guys on both sides they don't look like they're wearing like summer—they look bundled up like the weather is bad. I mean, the mud, the rain. Christopher Hamner: And Grant's got that going on too. The adjectives that you guys threw out—resolute. But he's lonely up there. And he's not interacting with the soldiers. Teacher 4: He's in the middle of it all; he's in the weather. You have the same type of weather theme being done, but he's still somehow above it all. Christopher Hamner: Literally above it! Right? He's kind of figuratively above this but he's also literally above it. There's a kind of sense of determination, he's got a fist on his hip. You get this sense of how resolute people wanted to imagine him as. This is a guy who understood that there was not a way to win the war except to do a lot of fighting and an incredible amount of dying, and you can kind of see the weight of that on his shoulders. Teacher 3: He sort of famously internalized a lot of the—I feel like you can see that, his shoulders are kind of hunched forward. Teacher 2: He's not postured the way that you see Stonewall Jackson. Teacher 5: He seems kind of hunched forward. Christopher Hamner: And remember, they had 20 years to think about this. They did not decide to raise the money for the statue on Monday, throw it together on Thursday, and commission it on Friday. There were 20 years of planning and artist models that they work a lot in clay on miniature before they cast something in bronze. There were all sorts of different potential ways to portray Grant. They didn't have to do it the way that they did it. And unlike other kinds of historical texts, where you can say sure you can change that, it's not written in stone—this is written in stone and cast in iron! Teacher 6: One thing that's striking me is that he's also surrounded by four lions. And typically what is a lion known as? The king of the jungle. I think that's speaking out to me right there, too. Christopher Hamner: Well, and then there's something else we haven't talked about, there's the sort of relief that's on the pedestal. Can you guys make out on both sides? Teacher 3: The cavalry again. And then the infantry on this side. Christopher Hamner: The soldiers are present, they're there. And again, that's a little more of a realistic depiction of the soldiers. Teacher 1: Thinking about both sides of the relief, they could have put that relief anywhere. But look where they put it. And what is the relief supporting? Grant. So the underlying message is his men supported him and his decision that he's making on that horse right now. Christopher Hamner: And you notice it's got this kind of realism that I think is really unprecedented, particularly for the time and it's still pretty rare. But, was it Brian pointed out the lions, there's the kind of marble pedestal. It's not the Korean Memorial where you can actually walk around the figures, it still has these nods to more traditional, classical form. But it also incorporates the stuff that's new and I think that makes it just so complicated and so interesting. There's a series of choices here and I think they tell us something about where the nation was at the close of the 19th century and remembering this war and figuring out where it fit into our national narrative.

Reading Place with the National Building Museum

Video Overview

What does architecture say about the past and the present? TAH teachers learn strategies for close examination of buildings in Washington, DC, including the National Building Museum, Capitol, and Lincoln Memorial.

Video Clip Name
buildingmuseum1.mov
buildingmuseum2.mov
buildingmuseum3.mov
buildingmuseum4.mov
Video Clip Title
Close Examination of an Object
Close Examination of a Building
Drawing First Impressions
Considering Intent
Video Clip Duration
4:05
3:39
4:15
4:03
Transcript Text

Mary Hendrickse: We're going to start off with a really simple activity—the Coke bottle—and finding out how much information we can get about Coca-Cola from this Coke bottle.

Speaker 1: I notice that the shape is made to feel good as you're holding it.

Kendra Huffbower: I notice that it's made out of glass, so it could be recycled…

Kendra Huffbower: The Coke bottle we were thinking about incorporating into our daily morning meeting routine. Where that's kind of the activity and you pass an object and you really have to think about what they're noticing and why they're noticing that and how it's used and the function and design of it.

Speaker 2: There's another image on here. There's an image of a Coke bottle printed on the Coke bottle. Maybe that's something to do with scanning or something?

Speaker 3: Yeah, going on the shape of it, it's kind of…seeing that it comes out of the 1950s-ish time, it's kind of got an hourglass shape of a slender woman's body.

Speaker 4: That was mine! No!

Speaker 3: But that's good, great minds think alike! It reminds me of Barbie or something.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, okay, so the hourglass figure type of idea.

Speaker 3: Whether that was implicit or not.

Mary Hendrickse: Why do you think—let's just go with that.

Speaker 4: Can I tell why, 'cause that was my thing?

Speaker 3: This was a joint thing between minds.

Mary Hendrickse: Why do you think they might have used that shape, that hourglass shape?

Speaker 4: I think it's advertising, because if I drink it I'm gonna look like Barbie.

Speaker 5: It has a date on it—11 February 12. I'm assuming it's either expiration date or…

Mary Hendrickse: If that is the expiration date, what do we think about that? That it expires next year, like eight months from now.

Speaker 6: Lots of preservatives.

Mary Hendrickse: Lots of preservatives, okay.

Speaker 2: That it has an expiration date, though, at all. That's better than if it doesn't!

Rachel Blessing: We talked a lot about visual literacy today and trying to incorporate that in a meaningful way in the classroom is my hope. I've been writing down how she's [Mary Hendrickse] been teaching us, because that's something that she's modeling for us. I don't know if she knows that, but she is.

Rachel Blessing: It's from Mexico.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, it was made in Mexico. So what does that tell us?

Kendra Doyle: I think sometimes we can just get so caught up in day-to-day things that we don't take the time to look at the outside of a building and just see what does this tell us, what does this mean? Taking the time to just slow down and observe and analyze, that’s something that I've learned.

Kendra Doyle: I noticed the label, it's red, and the way the Coca-Cola is written it looks like a ribbon almost, the script. It's like a repeating sound, it's like a catchy sound—Coca-Cola—it's like the same letters.

Mary Hendrickse: So, I wanted to point out that it took us one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 people to get to the logo that's written on it. Because that's something that we expect to see, so we don’t really think about it very often.

I have some disks that I'll give you at the end of the day in an electronic form so you can use it again if you want to and it's got the reason behind some of the design parts. They did go for the curvy bottle on purpose, for both easy gripping and attractiveness—because it looked like a woman—and the red and white because it was bold colors. So there's a reason behind even the smallest details of a Coke bottle, and the same thing goes with buildings. Even the smallest detail in a building has importance and has meaning.

Mary Hendrickse: Visual literacy is really about slowing your students down and asking them to articulate why they are making the assumptions they are. What did they see that makes them say that? We're very quick to say, "Oh, that's a school." Well, why does it look like a school? What about it makes it look like a school? It's about looking closer and longer and further. Drawing is one way that you can do that. It's also important to ask questions that bring you to more questions and more ideas. And it's also important to get your kids to ask questions too.

There's a handout over there called "50 Ways to Look at a Big Mac Box." These are good questions to use about anything. You can use them about a Coke bottle, you can use them about a building, you can use this as a reference. I'm going to give each group two pictures of buildings you may not be familiar with. You can either work on them together, you can pick one to work on as a group, or you can split up into two smaller groups. I would like you to use those questions and look really closely at the details to see if you can figure out more information about this building. Okay? Does that make sense to everybody?

[Group 1:]
Speaker 1: That's the entrance.

Speaker 2: And are these windows?

Speaker 1: Ah, could be, letting in some light.

Speaker 2: Or ventilation.

Speaker 3: So describe the shape—

Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say planetarium or an arena.

Speaker 4: I was thinking like a rec center.

Speaker 1: Yeah, a sports center.

[Group 2:]
Speaker 1: We said that we noticed the landscape in this one. We noticed the intentional barriers. The park area is set up to where you can enjoy the view of the building and set up to where you might want to just go and take a walk.

Speaker 2: There's shade because there's trees; if it's sunny you can do a picnic underneath them.

Speaker 3: And I think that's juxtaposed with the symmetrical almost like prism, to me, structure.

Speaker 1: The straight lines.

Speaker 3: It's straight, the windows are tiny and narrow and dark.

[Large-group discussion:]
Mary Hendrickse: We're going to go around and I'd like each group to tell a little bit about what they think about these buildings. What did you…what do you think about this one?

Speaker 1: The design is different. When you look inside of it, it looks kind of like the chandelier crystal things hanging down. The top looks very translucent. We were kind of thinking if it's like a memorial type thing.

Speaker 2: There's a variety of materials because the bottom level is like these pillars but glass in the front and in the back, and then there's this marble layer. We can't really tell what exactly the material is at the top, but it's like this mesh, it looks like a metal sort of mesh glittery something.

Speaker 3: And when you look up through the center of the building, you can see it glows a little bit, almost like it's open. So there's offices or some functioning room up top.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, yeah, absolutely. So this is one proposed design for the National Museum of African American Culture and Heritage. You guys were absolutely on target when you were thinking about what the different parts mean. The design was supposed to look like a crown—this idea of a crown—it was supposed to look like it glows. I mean, you guys were able to get a lot of information out of this just by looking at it.

[Group 3:]
Speaker 1: See what the people are wearing.

Speaker 2: See what the people are wearing or doing.
[This seems odd…should this group discussion be here?]

Mary Hendrickse: This building was built a long time ago to be both a Pension Bureau for Civil War soldiers so they could come in and pick up their retirement checks or pensions, and also a space to have inaugural balls. As we're going through we're going to be drawing things and looking at different aspects of the building and seeing how they can reveal different information about how this building was used.

Rachel Blessing: I can't tell you the last time I've drawn a picture, so just being forced to do those things and remembering what it's like for the kids, and also just learning new things. I grew up in DC, and I've been to this building but I didn't know half of what I learned today.

Speaker 1: Look, there's a clue. There's a Civil War clue right there. There's people coming to get their pensions.

Mary Hendrickse: The first thing that I want you to do is to open up your sketchbooks. We are going to do a 30-second quick sketch. I want you to get a sort of big picture, overall impressions of what you see in this space, okay? What were you able to capture in 30 seconds?

Multiple Speakers: Nothing. Columns. Arches.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, so columns, arches. So maybe something that the architect really wanted you to look at and focus on when you came into the building. What about those arches and columns? What do you notice about them?

Speaker 2: They look like aqueducts.

Mary Hendrickse: They look like aqueducts, okay. Aqueducts from today or from—

Speaker 3: No, like Rome.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, so like the Roman aqueducts.

Kendra Doyle: Ancient Greece and Rome—what connection does it have to that? What message are they trying to send? So I think being here sometimes reinforces some of those ideas about those things we've discussed in class.

Mary Hendrickse: What is this?

Multiple Speakers: It's the seal.

Mary Hendrickse: It's the seal. The seal of what?

Multiple Speakers: The United States of America.

Kendra Doyle: We might be able to actually do a field study to a site. If not, we also discussed just starting by analyzing the buildings that we're in. So many DC schools have this history and if we just take the time to look at what's around us, the buildings themselves tell an important story.

Mary Hendrickse: Doesn't have to be perfect, you're just recording clues. Your own interpretation of what you see.

Judy Leek Bowers: Drawing, I thought that was neat, because then you really do get to see what different people think is important. None of our drawings were the same.

Mary Hendrickse: We're going to do a really quick share; this is the easiest way to share. Everybody hold up your sketchpads like this. There you go. Take notice of what other people have drawn. Did they draw things that are similar to you? Different?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I did. I don't see what other people see.

Judy Leek Bowers: There's always a new technique. There's always somebody that you meet that has a different perspective. In just this short length of time it's opened my eyes to other ways to address the children. Really having more instruction that's almost individualized to each child so that they can think more deeply about the place and the power it might have.

Mary Hendrickse: What were some of the things that people drew?

Multiple Speakers: The doorway.

Speaker 1: The columns.

Mary Hendrickse: What can the door tell you about how the building was used? Is it like a normal door you would see on a house? How else is it different from a normal door?

Speaker 2: It's huge, it's inviting. The window above it at the same time—it's not a stained glass window, but still you [can] see an old castle or church.

Mary Hendrickse: It's a little bit elaborate; it's not really a plain door.

Speaker 3: What about the sculpture around the door? It's so different from that.

Mary Hendrickse: The sculptures around the door. Anybody want to guess who those people might be?

Speaker 4: You've got different ones. You have the Navy kind of on this side and then you have the Army maybe on this side.

Mary Hendrickse: We know it's from the Pension Bureau, so these were some of the people who were going to be coming into the building. So they had a visual clue on the outside of the building about what this building was used for.

Mary Hendrickse: Let's start off with the Capitol Building. Who was looking at the Capitol Building?

Speaker 1: The fact that there's the two houses—Senate and the House of Representatives—kind of link this idea of states and the nation, and then the dome in the middle kind of unifies the two. There's the Greek-style columns, which pay tribute to the birthplace of democracy.

Speaker 2: Everything else paled in comparison; the marble, the white symbolized purity.

Mary Hendrickse: Ideal, pristine, we're doing good things here. Perched upon the hill to add to the importance.

Speaker 1: Stately, powerful in itself; but not overdone, not overblown, not too elaborate.

Mary Hendrickse: A house for the president rather than a mansion for the president, or a castle for the president. So not towards the realm of king and royalty, but still important enough that a president can live in there.

Speaker 2: It's got kind of a plantation house feel to it, too.

Mary Hendrickse: Anything else that anybody wanted to add? We still have that continuation of the white coloring again and that reference to classical architecture with the columns and the capitals.

Mary Hendrickse: Who looked at the Jefferson Memorial?

Speaker 1: We talked about the columns and the architecture, the structure of the building being reminiscent of ancient Roman architecture and how Rome was the greatest power of its time so it's our expression of being one of the greatest powers in the world.

Speaker 2: We also talked about him standing as opposed to Lincoln, who is sitting.

Mary Hendrickse: What did you think about him standing?

Speaker 3: He was sort of presiding over everything and the idea that when you go to the monument you have to walk up the steps to greet him and you have to look up at Jefferson; and he's just sort of looking down—not looking down on us, but—

Mary Hendrickse: Surveying the land?

Speaker 3: Right. But just sort of overseeing, making sure the democracy stays intact.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, the Lincoln Memorial. Who was looking at that one?

Speaker 1: We talked about the Parthenon and the Greek influence.

Mary Hendrickse: Anything else? What about the size of Lincoln? He's huge! So what does that say?

Speaker 3: He's a huge figure in American history

Speaker 4: He has a huge position in our history.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, so his position in our history, he's this huge man, huge figure in our history. The original statue was going to be a lot smaller and then when they went to start trying to figure out putting it in the building they realized it was going to be much too small and it would be dwarfed by the architecture, so they made it even bigger.

Speaker 5: I always think it's so ironic to think that they ended up making this huge statue of him and making him this huge icon, whereas what we know of him and his personality is so humble and, you know, just your everyday man. I just only imagine what he would think if he could see this.

Mary Hendrickse: It's got symbols on it about Lincoln, but the building itself has become a bigger symbol for civil rights and for rights in general. It's grown beyond what Lincoln was about to be even more symbolic and meaningful to the country.

Speaker 6:: So don't meanings always evolve? The meanings of the power of a place always is changing.

Mary Hendrickse: Absolutely, these things grow, you're absolutely right. They grow and they evolve until what we think now about the Lincoln Memorial is not the same thing they would have thought about the Lincoln Memorial in the 1920s.

Judy Leek Bowers: I'm understanding that everything that's historical is not written. Some things are based on the boulder that's in the middle of the road and it has a story behind it. Why is it significant in the District of Columbia, and why is it significant to you? And that's where I need to learn to make the connection for the students. Who really decides if the place has power?

Visiting the George Mason Memorial jlee Thu, 06/13/2019 - 10:17
Video Overview

How can you encourage teachers to view monuments and memorials as primary and secondary sources, ripe for analysis? Historians Christopher Hamner and Michael O'Malley introduced Teaching American History (TAH) grant project teachers to the George Mason Memorial in Washington, DC.

Video Clip Name
georgemasonmem.mov
Video Clip Title
George Mason Memorial
Video Clip Duration
1:16
Transcript Text

Christopher Hamner: We had, I thought, the beginning of a very good conversation there with the teachers about choices. It could have been a different pose, it could have been different books. The quotes had obviously been selected very carefully that flank his statue. Michael O’Malley: You can problematize it really easily, you know, and it's so situated in this specific politics, so I thought that worked well. Christopher Hamner: And just kind of getting them open to this idea of monuments as texts, as sources, as something that you can ask questions about and you can approach it not just—this is not just or even foremost a monument to George Mason, the 18th-century Virginia thinker, but also to the moment in time in which the statue and the monument was designed, commissioned, erected, and opened. I thought that was also a great place to start because it kind of jolted them out of the tourist mode and into— Michael O’Malley: Into the inquirer mode. Cause you’re not at the—there’s the thing everybody is looking at, Jefferson. Instead you’re looking at this odd guy on this bench. So I would probably use that again. I thought that worked pretty well.

A Close Look at the World War II Memorial

Video Overview

Historian Christopher Hamner introduces educators to the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. He places the memorial in context: How does the story of its construction contrast with that of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial? Who was the World War II Memorial built for? What was its design intended to convey?

Video Clip Name
wwmem1.mov
wwmem2.mov
wwmem3.mov
Video Clip Title
The Vietnam Memorial
The World War II Memorial in Contrast
Audience and Symbolism
Video Clip Duration
6:39
5:34
5:55
Transcript Text

Christopher Hamner: We're standing right in front of the World War II Memorial; how many of you have visited it before? Okay, great. I want to talk a little bit about why it's here and what it looks like, and then give you some time to explore a little bit. But I don't think you can really understand why the memorial looks the way that it does without knowing a little bit about a totally different memorial—the Vietnam War Memorial. So how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorial? Okay, great, just about everybody. What have your experiences been? Teacher 1: Very somber. Christopher Hamner: Okay, somber, absolutely. Teacher 2: Dark. Christopher Hamner: Yeah, no, it's somber, it's dark. Teacher 3: Emotional because it has the little book with the names and relatives. Christopher Hamner: Yeah, I mean draws you in, it can be incredibly emotional because it has become a destination point for a lot of the people who served in the Vietnam conflict, people leave things there, they'll take rubbings of people they knew—it's interactive in a way that not many memorials are. It has its own really interesting story; the story of the Vietnam Memorial goes back to the mid-'70s. It was a project started by a veteran of the Vietnam conflict who saw the movie Deer Hunter, which took him back to his own experiences fighting in the war. He said he stayed up all night and that the next morning he told his wife that he was going to dedicate himself to raising money for a memorial to the people that he had served with in Vietnam. The monument that you think of as the Vietnam Memorial, which is the wall—that V-shaped wall that sort of starts low and rises to a peak of I think 6 or 7 feet and has the names inscribed on it—is actually only one of three Vietnam Memorials that are in the same place. And in 2012, we know this as one of the most moving monuments, a place where people will come from across the country to connect with it. It was incredibly controversial at first, and that's a part of the story that we often tune out. But it has a backstory. As they raised money they began to solicit designs for the memorial. And I talked to you guys this morning when we were at the Grant Memorial, and we've talked a lot of times about all sorts of historical sources, that things are made, they don't just appear, and they're designed by a person or a committee who wants to get an idea out there. The Vietnam Memorial is a little unusual in that they opened a design contest nationally. And somewhat atypically they did the jury review blind. Architecture—architects and designers could put forth a plan for what the memorial might look like, and then they submitted it. They all went out to a big hanger like at Dulles Airport. But all the information about who had designed it and who they were and what their background was was all stripped off, so that the judges were only looking at the idea itself. And the design that you know of as "The Design" was one of the last two dozen and then one of the last nine and then the last three and it was ultimately the one that was selected. The selection and the unveiling of the design—before it was even built—went off like a bombshell. One of the groups that was most opposed to it was Vietnam War veterans. They were opposed to a number of things. One was the design of it. It is a somber memorial, it is black, it is anti-heroic, I think, in some ways. Did anybody see as we were walking over here on Constitution, happen to look over at the statue of the gold arm holding up a sword with flames? Okay, so what was that? Anybody catch it? Teacher 4: St. Michael or something wasn't it? Teacher 5: World War I, was it Second Division? Christopher Hamner: It was a monument to the Second Infantry Division and its losses in the First World War. You saw the arm holding up the flaming sword and then a list of all the battles that the Second Division fought in. That's much more of a kind of typical, classic war memorial. You put up a leader, or you put up something—a lion or an eagle or wreathes or something that has classical overtones and celebrates the heroism—and that is not what the Vietnam Memorial is. It was designed very specifically. The designer said that it was designed to get people to interact with it; it has the names of all of the people that were killed during the decade or so of the conflict. How are they organized? Teacher 6: The middle is the earliest and then it goes out to the side. Christopher Hamner: They’re organized chronologically in the order that the people died. So you cannot go and just alphabetically find the person that you want to find. That design forces you to look at a lot more of it than you would if you could just go right to the person you were looking for. You have to look over all of the names, or a lot more of the names, and it forces you to engage with it. What's the finish like, can anybody remember? Multiple Teachers: It's reflective. Christopher Hamner: The finish of the black marble is highly reflective. So as you're looking at the names you can also see your own face reflected in it. That's by design too. None of this was done accidentally. It encourages you to put yourself in the middle of these people and to think about the sacrifice and to think about it in very personal terms. The other thing that became a big issue with the design was the identity of the designer itself. Her name was Maya Lin. She was a 20-year-old Yale architecture student—so she was very young to win such a prestigious national competition—she was female, and she was Asian. None of those things sat particularly well with a vocal group of Vietnam veterans who felt that everything about the memorial was wrong—the location of it, the tone of it, the somberness of it. You can absolutely see where they're coming from. If you look around at most war memorials and you see that they celebrate heroism and glory and sacrifice, you might think this is not how I want my time, my conflict, to be remembered. This isn't what I want people thinking about. That was a really legitimate point, but it opens up this whole question of: Who is the memorial for?

Christopher Hamner: So despite the fact that the Second World War was fought after—or before the Vietnam War by 25 years or so, the World War II Memorial was actually started 15 years after the Vietnam Memorial. To my eye, a big part of what the World War II Memorial is about is not being controversial. That they did not want to open a similar can of worms about how are we going to celebrate this, how are we going to commemorate it, who is it for? It bends over backwards and goes to great lengths not to be controversial. And in a way kind of just dilutes it to a point where it doesn't say anything controversial, but I also don't know that it says all that much. People have pointed out that it's very classically derived. Curiously it actually looks like a lot of the memorials that the German architect Albert Speer built in Berlin during the Second World War as part of the Nazi government. Which is weird, because it's a memorial that looks a little bit like the architecture of the country that it's built to celebrate the defeat of. But you notice it's got 50-some plinths and they each have wreaths. Has anybody who's seen this before noticed how the plinths are organized? Teacher 1: By state, that's all I know. Christopher Hamner: By state, so every state and then some of the U.S. protectorates, Guam, the Virgin Islands. When you’re standing you can take a little bit closer look, there's Wyoming, Washington, South Dakota, Nevada, Kansas, Minnesota. That's interesting as a historian in that the states really had nothing to do with the way the war was fought. In the Civil War that was more true, people went off with the people from their home state, from their home town. But the Second World War deliberately didn't do that. They mixed people from Iowa and Florida and Alabama and Massachusetts in the same units. So it's not like the states went forward to fight. And it's not like the state governments had much of a role in the Second World War. The Second World War was very much the federal government's achievement. So to organized the wreathed tributes, which are the big outer ring, why do you do that? Teacher 2: It could be honoring the dead from each state. Christopher Hamner: It could be. I'll buy that. Why not do it by the different military units that fought, you know, the First Division, the Second Division, the Fourth Division. Teacher 3: It could be just underscoring that it's the United States, as opposed to— Christopher Hamner: And the circle, I think, does that and pulls it together. Teacher 4: It sounds like they designed by committee. Christopher Hamner: Yes, which is exactly what this was. The committee was formed in the mid-1990s, there was a real push by members of Congress who were World War II veterans themselves, and who said—quite reasonably—that this generation is not going to be around forever; we need to celebrate and commemorate their sacrifice and their achievement while they're still here to appreciate it. Then the design went through a series of committee decisions, which the Vietnam Memorial didn't, you know the Vietnam Memorial is one person's vision. Partly the decisions here reflect a desire to make sure that there's just nothing controversial about it. If you put it in by state and there's really nothing to—that could possibly be controversial about that—because everybody came from a state or a protectorate—but at the same time it doesn't really say much about the war. It just sort of recognizes the fact that there were four dozen entities that are there. Then you've got the big arches—one represents the European Theatre, one represents the Pacific Theatre, the two big fountains, it's like the freedom palisade. But everything is, I think, kind of homogenized in a way to make sure that it's not too controversial. There's not much in there that would get somebody saying this is an inaccurate way to portray my experience. Teacher 5: The order of the states, is it like— Christopher Hamner: I have no idea, I have not been able to figure that out! Teacher 5: Well I was wondering is it the same thing like on the Lincoln Memorial. Teacher 6: No, there is an order and it's in the brochure. Teacher 7: It says they alternate to the right and left of the field of stars based on when they entered the Union. Delaware was the first state. Christopher Hamner: So it is the order that they entered, but it goes back and forth… Teacher 6: That's bizarre. Christopher Hamner: That's just weird. For those of you who were with us this summer when we talked about the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian. That was 1995, the big brouhaha about how are you going to display the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Air and Space Museum is right over there. And remember, that was a hugely controversial issue, they never wound up mounting the exhibit, several people who had backed it lost their jobs. That's in the recent memory of the people who are putting this together. Who I think wanted to make a memorial that could be the center where people could gather, something that was inoffensive to veterans, and to the families of veterans. But as a result I just don't think there's all that much there.

Christopher Hamner: Make your way around the outside and then the inside. On the inside there are reliefs that portray different facets of going to war—from the bombing offensive over Europe to the home front. Interestingly, everything is covered. Again, I think the goal was to be really inclusive and to try to make sure that everyone's war experience was represented in some way. There are two Easter eggs. There's a little surprising piece of graffiti—if you look for it you can find it—that is the one thing that breaks the very somber, classical architecture, you've got wreathes, you've got eagles, you've got very somber-looking white marble plinths. There's two pieces of graffiti that are hard to find, but that are much more about—are they in the brochure? That's cheating—but they're much more reflective of the soldiers' experience. Then the other thing to check once you've gotten down into the lower level is the field of gold stars, which is an interesting—[it] kind of borrows a little bit from the Vietnam Wall. There were about 56,000 deaths in Vietnam; there were more than 400,000 deaths in the Second World War. So it's obviously not possible to put every name on the World War II Memorial. So what they did instead, as you can see from here, it's sort of directly behind me, there's a fountain with a gold star for every 500 deaths. So each star represents 500 people who lost their lives fighting the Second World War. To me it has a really interesting effect. When I'm here I often hang out by the fountain to listen to tourist responses. One of the ones I hear the most is my first response, which is, "That's not as many stars as I thought." 400,000 is a huge amount of loss of life and sacrifice, and each one represents 500 families who are missing a son or a father or a brother. But for some reason the number 500 divides it in and it doesn't seem like as much as I would have thought, which I think is exactly the opposite of the intention they wanted to have. I don't know exactly how they made that judgment, but you might want to walk down and see what response you get to that. As a historian I've always thought it's just weird to have it organized by the states. It's very interesting to me now when I come back and visit and I'll watch people interacting with it, especially World War II veterans make a beeline right for their home state and there will often be World War II veterans standing around acting as interpreters and they'll be wearing their uniforms and they'll often ask if you'd like to hear a little from them. And they go right for their home states too, so on some level it's worked a lot. It's just to me it just doesn’t resonate because that's one category that didn't organize the war in any way. It would be like a monument that said, this part of the monument is for guys from 5'0'' to 5'3'' and this part is from 5'3'' to 5'6''—it doesn't really say much. The other question to be asking yourself is who is this for? It was expedited in Congress and the fundraising and the construction with the thought that it was very important to have something memorializing the sacrifice of the veterans' generation while some of them were still alive. That's not always the reason we commemorate things, memorials go up for different reasons. The Vietnam Memorial is a really good example because there's a memorial that at first the most vocal opponents were Vietnam veterans themselves who said we do not want that, that does not represent us. And in the 1980s, they said, well, it's not just about you. It's about the whole country's experience in Vietnam and the way it affected everyone besides just the people who fought. You can think about which parts of this are for servicemen and -women, which parts are for their families, which parts are for just regular Americans, what part of it is teaching—which is a useful tool that monuments do—and which part is just commemoration or celebration. But the most interesting way to look at this is in conjunction with the Vietnam Memorial and the Korean Memorial, which is another interesting outlier. Those of you that have seen that, it's like a large field of slightly larger than life figures, but the real tone there is realism. It is not a sort of idealized version of the war which you often see, especially with Civil War monuments when you're driving around DC—you'll see the guy on horseback and he's got the gleaming gold braid and the horse is rearing back and they look larger than life. The Korean War these guys are slogging across a field, they're in their winter gear and they look tired. You can see the weight hanging in their shoulders, they're humping pieces of gear, some of them have mortar tubes and machine guns slung across their shoulders, and you can see the fatigue in their faces, you can see the exhaustion in their bodies. That's a really different kind of portrayal. There isn't that level of realism here, there isn't that level of representation and I don't think they're trying to have that here. So different memorials that are all talking about the same basic thing—which is what does this country do when it goes to war?—still have really different designs. You can learn a lot about where the country was at the time the memorial was being designed and built by taking a close look at what it looks like and thinking about how it might have looked different.

A Close Look at the FDR Memorial

Video Overview

Historian Christopher Hamner introduces educators to the original Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC—a simple engraved block of marble. Hamner asks how this memorial, dedicated in 1965, contrasts with the 1997 memorial on the Tidal Basin. What different purposes do the two memorials serve?

Video Clip Name
fdr1.mov
fdr2.mov
Video Clip Title
Comparing FDR Memorials
Different Purposes
Video Clip Duration
4:51
3:00
Transcript Text

Christopher Hamner: Somebody who's been to the FDR Memorial describe that one.

Teacher 1: An experience.

Christopher Hamner: Okay. What does it look like? How big is it.

Teacher 1: It's huge.

Teacher 2: It's larger than life.

Teacher 3: It's the different acts or time periods in his life.

Christopher Hamner: So how much—it covers a fairly large spread of ground. It covers different phases of his life. The centerpiece is. . . ?

Teacher 4: Him in his wheelchair.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, exactly. He's in his wheelchair, I think he's got his dog Fala—which is always a crossword puzzle answer—F A L A, if that comes up. Why is this here if we have a perfectly good memorial over by the Tidal Basin?

Teacher 5: The money? They had extra money.

Teacher 6: This one was earlier.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, this one's first. That's a good question, but this one is actually first. And this is the one that FDR suggested during his lifetime. He had been elected president four times; it seems more likely than not that he might someday get a memorial. When asked what would be an appropriate way to commemorate his life as a public servant, I believe he was in the Oval Office, and he said a block of marble the size of this desktop with my name and my birth date and placed at the National Archives. He thought that—which I think is very understated, he picked the location, he picked the design, and that's exactly what you've got. The FDR Memorial at the Tidal Basin is totally different—in so much as he told us exactly what he wanted, it kind of flies in the face of his wishes and his explicit instructions.

There's a further twist there and if you remember back to the second week when Michael O'Malley came in and talked about political theater. The centerpiece of the memorial at the Tidal Basin is FDR in his wheelchair. For a president who went to such enormous lengths over the course of his entire political career to never be photographed in his wheelchair. Remember Professor O'Malley talking about how he would set up rails so he could appear to walk to the podium, so that he could carry himself to the podium, he had a car outfitted with hand controls. This is not just someone who did not make a big deal about the fact that he was in a wheelchair; this is someone who went to great lengths to disguise that fact.

Christopher Hamner: That’s a great point to talk about: Who is this memorial for? Is it for the person; is it for the generation for whom he was such a central figure? There's a whole generation of Americans and he guided them through the Depression and the Second World War, is the memorial for them? Is it for us, for contemporary generations who are trying to place him in a historical context? Those are really useful questions and they're transportable. You can ask these questions about any monument in any place.

Christopher Hamner: Why do we do that?

Teacher 5: We've got to teach now. The other memorial is supposed to be a teaching memorial. This I think was probably done fairly close after his death—

Christopher Hamner: I would imagine.

Teacher 5: It's not designed to teach.

Teacher 7: I know! There's a little marker right there that explains. It was put in by his friends of his to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his death in 1965.

Christopher Hamner: Is that the right thing to do? To go…when somebody says this is how I want to be commemorated and you go and say yeah, alright, we're going to do something different.

Teacher 7: It depends on who it's for. If you're doing it for that person, yes. The other memorial is not for him.

Christopher Hamner: So who is it for?

Teacher 8: Everybody else.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, that could be a glib but accurate answer.

Teacher 5: But it's for people who didn't experience New Deal programs. At this point—I had the reality check that I am now wholly in a totally different generation than my students this year. Their great-grandparents fought in World War II versus my grandparents. And that their grandfathers fought in Vietnam whereas my father fought in Vietnam. So you've got so many people that are so far removed at this point that this isn't going to teach them about who Franklin Roosevelt was.

Christopher Hamner: Is that what a memorial is supposed to do?

Teacher 5: That's I think what the goal of the other memorial is.

Christopher Hamner: This is where you get into the sort of interesting, undefined territory of what do we want to use this space for?

Teacher 1: There's a contrast. I think that FDR was rather shortsighted when he said I want to be remembered this way. Because I do believe that there is a teaching technique, the teacher in me comes out, but those are memories. If I wasn't an American, if I was not a history teacher, if I was just walking down the road, this just looks like a gigantic tombstone for some schmoe. Therefore, there is no memory being projected and I think that you have to honor him. I love that idea—that "I was a simple man"—but I think he was being shortsighted because we will not remember him without knowing the great things that came with him.

Christopher Hamner: I think part of the power of this is exactly how understated it is. Particularly in a city where there's Logan Circle, there are huge statues, 15-foot-tall statues, of Civil War figures that people have totally forgotten. Here is someone whose place in 20th-century history is immense and there is a kind of disconnect between the immensity of his contributions and the really plain nature of this. To that extent I think it does have some power because there's so many statues around here that are so overly grandiose and kind of hit you in the face with the importance of what they're celebrating and you think, not that important, not that significant in the long run. Whereas this, if anything I think Roosevelt's reputation has been burnished by historians over the years and this is incredibly plain and understated.

Teacher 2: How would we not remember him? That's the other component of it.

Teacher 1: Time. Time kills it.

Christopher Hamner: I think about the Martin Luther King Memorial. He talked during his life a lot about how he was a part of something, that he was not the Civil Rights Movement, but that he was a part of a larger wave. I think that that was an important statement in part because it indicates his humility but also because it underlines the rightness of the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't one person saying okay, now the country's going in this direction but a large segment of the country saying this injustice has to be corrected. I'm not sure how comfortable King would have been to be singled out with a statue of him covered with his quotes.

On the other hand, to not do something is sometimes sending as powerful a message as to do something. To have the National Mall, which celebrates Lincoln and Washington and Grant and a lot of white elite political figures, and to not have part of the Civil Rights Movement and the African American leaders who helped push it through, that's a conspicuous absence. To not put anything is kind of an interesting—that makes an interesting comment, too.

Harding Home, Museum, and Tomb [OH]

Description

Warren G. Harding launched himself into the White House in 1920 with his famous "front porch" campaign, which he conducted from his Victorian home in Marion, OH. The restored house was built in 1891 and contains almost all original furnishings owned by President Harding and his wife Florence. Adjacent to the Harding Home is a press house used during the 1920 campaign which now serves as a museum dedicated to President and Mrs. Harding's lives. Located two miles from the Home and Museum is the Harding Tomb, a circular monument of white Georgia marble containing the remains of President and Mrs. Harding, set in 10 acres of landscaped grounds.

An individual website for the Harding Tomb can be found here.

The house and museum offer exhibits, tours, and educational programs; the tomb is open to the public.

Fort Jefferson and Monument [OH] Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/08/2008 - 13:28
Description

Fort Jefferson Park and Monument mark the site of an advance outpost of General Arthur St. Clair, built in October 1791. It was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State. One of a chain of defensive forts built to protect army supplies from Indians, it served as a supply base throughout the campaigns of General St. Clair and General Anthony Wayne. It was abandoned in 1796. The monument is made of faced granite field boulders, six feet square and 20 feet tall. No part of the fort remains.

The site is open to the public.

The Origins of the Service Flag

field_image
Digital Image, Service Flag (Edited), 27 Aug 2012, Blue Star Mother's of America
Question

Our church has a World War I service flag with 16 stars. One has a gold star. Two have gold crosses. What do the gold crosses mean?

Answer

Following America’s entrance into World War I, families of servicemen began displaying flags to show support for their sons and husbands fighting in France. According to the Blue Star Mothers of America Organization, the service flag was designed and patented by Army Captain Robert L. Queisser of the 5th Ohio Infantry, who had two sons serving in the war. (1)

The display of service flags became extremely popular during World War II.

Service flags were an indoor, wartime flag, generally about a foot in length and usually suspended vertically in a window for public viewing. Many of these flags were handmade from cotton or wool by mothers or spouses. Businesses and churches would sometimes display larger flags in order to recognize the service of employees or members. A blue star represented each family member in active service. In the event of a service member’s death, the blue star would either be covered or replaced with a gold star, sometimes surrounded by a laurel wreath. A gold circle signified distinguished service. Gold crosses set inside a blue star signified that a family member was wounded. A red star represented a captured or missing member. So it appears that your church’s service flag denoted 16 members serving in World War I, with one killed (gold star) and two wounded (gold crosses).

The display of service flags became extremely popular during World War II. One of the most well-known service flags served as a striking backdrop for a patriotic poster honoring the Sullivan brothers, all five of whom perished at sea with the sinking of the U.S.S. Juneau. Though the popularity of the service flag waned in the post-World War II years, it regained some of its popularity in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, Today, the Department of Defense has specific regulations for manufacturing, selling, and displaying the service flag. For example, vendors must obtain a license to manufacture the flag; its ratio of length to width must be the same as the national flag, and display of the service flag at a residence is restricted to immediate family members and only during wartime.

For more information

Kerrick, Harrison S. The Flag of the United States: Your Flag and Mine. Columbus, OH: Champlin Publishing Company, 1925.

Institute of Heraldry, Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. “Frequently Asked Questions-Service Flag and Service Lapel Button.” Accessed August 21, 2012.

Bibliography
1Blue Star Mothers of America, Inc. “About the Service Flag.” Accessed August 22, 2012.
Washington Monument National Memorial [DC] Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/08/2008 - 13:27
Description

The Washington Monument is the most prominent, as well as one of the older, attractions in Washington, D.C. It was built in honor of George Washington, who led the country to independence, and then became its first President. The Monument is shaped like an Egyptian obelisk, 555' 5/8" high, and averages 30 to 40 miles visibility in clear weather. It was finished on December 6, 1884.

The monument offers elevator rides to its top.

Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee National Memorial [VA] Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/08/2008 - 13:26
Description

Arlington House was the home of Robert E. Lee and his family for 30 years and is uniquely associated with the Washington and Custis families. George Washington Parke Custis built the house to be his home and a memorial to George Washington, his step-grandfather. It is now preserved as a memorial to General Lee, who gained the respect of Americans in both the North and the South.

The house offers exhibits, tours, and educational programs.

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