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Trump's 250-foot Arch Faces Legal Battle Over Historic Sightlines
Developing
In Short: Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, told Fox News Digital that the plaintiffs are concerned about the arch obstructing historic sightlines between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House.
Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, told Fox News Digital that the plaintiffs are concerned about the arch obstructing historic sightlines between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House.
The Trump administration has cited a 1925 law that authorized a pair of 166-foot columns that were never built, but critics argue the arch will disrupt the carefully designed views of the nation's capital.
Sansone noted that the nation's capital was designed to preserve unobstructed views between key landmarks, and the arch would interfere with these historic sightlines.
The Trump administration's planning document acknowledges that the project will have 'adverse effects on historic properties,' raising further concerns among the plaintiffs.
The proposed arch, which Trump has said would be the largest in the world, is intended to be built near Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for over 400,000 military service members.
What's still developing
- "One of the sort of central design features is that the capital has been laid out in a very deliberate way to create this uninterrupted view between the Lincoln Memorial on the east side of the Potomac River and Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, on the west side in Arlington National Cemetery," he said.
- Veterans Michael Lemmon, Shaun Byrnes, and Jon Gundersen—along with architectural historian Calder Loth—have been engaged in a months-long legal battle with the Trump administration over the "Great Triumphal Arch".
- "So our plaintiffs… are really sort of concerned about the impact that this sort of enormous structure is going to have on that sort of historic symbolic view that each of them finds really meaningful," he added.
Sources
- Fox Newslink