US President Donald Trump has plans to fund the construction of a new national monument with leftover donations from his White House ballroom project, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.
According to the source, the arch would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial if built.
Meant to commemorate the US's 250th Independence Day, Trump reportedly intends the 250-foot-tall arch to stand on Memorial Circle, between the Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
In December, Trump told POLITICO that he expected construction on the structure to begin “sometime in the next two months.”
Earlier ideas floated by Trump included smaller arches, measuring 123 or 165 feet. A 250-foot-tall arch would be much larger than Paris’s Arc de Triomphe.
Mexico City’s Monumento a la Revolución, standing at 220 feet, would also be overshadowed by the planned monument.
A White House spokesperson told the Washington Post that Trump intends the arch to be “one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world.”
A monument that large could cause problems for visitors
According to some historians, building such a large monument on Memorial Circle could pose problems for visitors.
Calder Loth, formerly a senior architectural historian for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, told the Washington Post that he would be “very concerned” about the size of the proposed arch because of its proximity to the Arlington House, built as a memorial to George Washington.
Built in the early 19th century, the site is part of the Arlington National Cemetery Historical Region.
“It would make Arlington House just look like a dollhouse,” Loth warned, “or you couldn’t see it all, with the arch blocking the view.”
In 2024, art critic Catesby Leigh proposed a 60-foot temporary arch to commemorate the anniversary of the US founding. Now, he opposes the construction of the monument on architectural grounds.
“I don’t think an arch that large belongs there,” Leigh told the Washington Post.
“If you’re going to build an arch that big, you should build it in another part of town, and one possible site that comes to mind is Barney Circle,” he said, proposing an alternate site for the memorial.
“There’s nothing around it competing with it.”