GEHRY TO DESIGN EISENHOWER MEMORIAL

Deborah K. Dietsch reports for the Washington Times that Frank Gehry has been selected to design the national memorial to President Eisenhower on a site off the Mall in Washington, DC. The memorial will be built on a four-acre parcel between fourth and sixth streets southwest of Independence Avenue and near the National Air and Space Museum. “We were looking for creativity and an understanding of the president and his times, and Gehry gave us that,” said Rocco C. Siciliano, who heads the ten-year-old Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission with Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii. Siciliano said the commission’s decision on Tuesday to choose Gehry was unanimous. Dwight David Eisenhower II, the president’s grandson, serves on the commission and was one of eleven judges who made the selection. The other finalists were Krueck & Sexton Architects of Chicago, landscape architect Peter Walker of Berkeley, California, and New York’s Rogers Marvel Architects PLLC. Each received fifty thousand dollars to develop a design concept.