Problem is that 50 years ago...1956...the Mall was not pristine with beautiful vistas. It was still occupied by WWII era (and deteriorating) "temporary" offices. A good read on this is David Brinkley's Washington goes to War, which details the transition of Washington from a relatively regional pre-war city into the bustling hub it has become.

Furthermore, the Mall has almost always been under construction...at least since the Washington Monument began construction in 1844 and not completing until 1885.

While Congress began planning the Lincoln memorial as early as 1867 a site wasn't chosen until 1901 and the cornerstone wasn't laid until 1914. The monument was completed in 1922. It is important here to recognize that the land on which it sits was swampland, not part of any majestic mall. See the work of Barry Schwartz on Lincoln for some of the motivation on Abe.

Further, it is hard to imagine, if you've ever been there, that the FDR memorial is any part of the Mall. It is adjacent to the Tidal Basin; not any more part of the Mall than is the Jefferson Memorial.

Methinks that Balko is revisioning a past that is more wishful thinking than grounded in fact. And I think that the analogy to government fails to hold up, primarily because the structures of the Mall are designed to hold up "eternally" (and I use that term knowing full well nothing is) whilst the government itself certainly changes. Look back 50 years at the structures of government and yes, its grown tremendously, but so has it shrunk in many areas. There is change in government not afforded to monuments--though their surroundings certainly get altered.

Are we overbuilding the Mall? Perhaps. I am pretty sure that the powers that be have already selected 14 sites for "future memorials." And the WWII Memorial's fascist architecture is barely more tolerable than the Korean War's laser/disco wall of names and line-dancing larger than life soldiers. However, it seems unlikely that future generations will not assert that there own heroes and wars are just as deserving recognition in the iconic gardens of US civil religion than are those from our own time.

Cheers,

Dave

Balko's analogy was not meant to suggest that the many relatively minor government projects and programs demanded by small groups of people accumulate because they never go away, once they are there. The analogy is between Congress' inability to say "no" to demands for new memorials, which creates clutter, and Congress' inability to say "no" to other demands, which creates expense.

I also do not think that temporary clutter or past construction on monuments at the National Mall is relevant, because his argument is not that it has always been pristine in the past, and that this needs to be preserved -- it is that Congress' inability to say "no" is making things worse.

Something that I have noticed that is only marginally related to this topic is that when I have looked at the White House from the Washington Monument, the "skyline," if it could be called that, behind the White House is unpleasant-looking. I think it would be unreasonable to expect all of that to be removed and replaced with something else, just so it could be possible to take a good picture of the White House from that angle, but when those buildings are replaced in the future, if someone would want to build attractive buildings in their place, I would be in favor of it.