I just loved working on this, and learning new things about D.C. as a resident:
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Tomorrow the Commission of Fine Arts will take another look at Trump's proposed arch, including renderings of it viewed from around the area. Here is its winged statue, peeping over the trees from the National Mall.
Or did you ever notice that Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial was designed to point directly at the Washington and Lincoln monuments?
More detailed renderings now available for Trump's proposed arch:
www.cfa.gov/system/files...
Did you all realize that the National Mall is slightly crooked compared to the rest of D.C.'s L'Enfant street grid? The McMillan Commission did that!
"'Pay no attention to the man in the corner’ is a little difficult to me when the man in the corner who is tweeting is the president," Chutkan says.
The East Wing demolition is now making it difficult for the government to argue in the Arch lawsuit that no injunction is needed because construction isn't imminent.
Judge Chutkan just doesn’t believe it, when the president himself has said he wants the arch by July 4th.
Catching up on this thorough and thoughtful @philipkennicott.bsky.social piece on Trump's designs on the capital, until now a city of simple symmetry and unfussy architecture:
www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/0...
Washington is full of these incredibly thoughtful details -- it's part of what makes the capital unlike any other city in America.
Careful planning is Washington’s whole thing: symbolic sightlines; monuments that speak to one another; columns, rooflines and axes aligned just so. The whole city is supposed to be a work of civic art.
Trump’s projects test this 235-year-old idea: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
Emily Badger
The city is unlike any in America for its accumulation of intricate details, a whole that is a work of civic art.
