American memorials and monuments are human-made landmarks that position us in the landscape – but they position us in time and society, too.
A visit to a monument is like travelling through three time zones at once. It gives a hint of what has been; it tells of what its creators wanted us to remember (and how they thought it should be remembered); and it also enables us to reflect on our present circumstances and to look at the community around us in a certain reflective light.
But there’s a certain type of monument that doesn’t just cross
time-zones – it crosses dimensions, too. These are the monuments that
were never built. Statues that were planned and scrapped. Structures
that were too controversial to see through to completion. They tell the
story of a different way of seeing America, and they exist in a kind of
shadowland next to the one that we occupy.
The folks at CashNetUSA wanted something a bit more concrete to go on
– so they researched a range of unbuilt monuments and create a new set of visuals showing how they might have looked.
In some cases, it’s just a minor adjustment. The Mount Rushmore
presidents were at one point slated to be full-figure sculptures, until
money and internal squabbling among the heritage team caused the project
to be scaled back. Lucky they didn’t start with the feet!
We might also have ended up with a cowboy memorial. The original
vision of the local figures who wanted the mountain carved up was to
memorialize regional ‘heroes’ such as Chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill
Cody, and Lewis and Clark. But the sculptor they employed to do the
work, Gutzon Borglum, wanted to do something that would have a wider resonance – so the Sioux warriors were out, the dead presidents in.
Other imagined memorials were more controversial still. A certain
Mrs. Clarence Crittenden Calhoun proposed a not-unwarranted tribute to
motherhood in Washington DC: a stone structure that would (according to
the Washington Post) “typify the light of maternal solicitude always
watching over the world,” being visible “from every part of the National
Capital and its approaches.”
The controversy was not in the choice of subject (although no doubt there were plenty of men asking “what about a tribute to Fatherhood?”).
The problem was the financial dispute that arose between Calhoun, who
was somewhat reluctant to part with the promised fee for building the
thing, and sculptor William Clark Noble, who fell down with a heart
attack at the climax of the bitter legal trial that unfolded between them. The building was never delivered.
Or then there’s the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City.
Perhaps you’ve visited the illuminated and optimistic tower that exists
today. It’s a good example of the powers-that-be defining the way that
our lost ones are remembered: Harold Van Buren Magonigle’s winning
design defeated a far more interesting but somewhat gloomy sketch from
rival Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Death in war is supposed to be
triumphant, according to those in command; not a miserable waste of
precious life.
Check out these and other unbuilt monuments below, and next time you
visit one of America’s famous artificial landmarks remember to ask
yourself: what did the people who made this want me to think? And do I
agree with them?
Source : youramazingplaces
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