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Cities and their Monuments

  • 1.  Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-16-2017 11:59 AM

    Cities and their Confederate Monuments 

    When the US President asked where the monument removal would end and if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be next, he certainly spoke for many Americans who ask the same question, possibly the majority of Americans. For them the Confederate monuments in many cities are just decoration which one passes daily like so many flowerpots. White Americans are still the majority in most States and they are quite comfortable without poking around in what seems a distant history. But this view lacks a deeper understanding and empathy, i.e. the ability to put oneself in somebody else shoes. It lacks the basic insight that for African Americans these same Confederate monuments are a thumb in the eye every time they see them as well as for everyone else who is glad that the Civil War ended with a Union victory. An op-ed of the LA Times written on occasion of the New Orleans monuments expresses this point:
    They are ideological symbols meant to assert power over our public spaces, a fact that became palpable during a contentious City Council debate on the removal plan. When a gray-haired preservationist in a bow tie stood up and gave the finger to removal advocates, I understood that those statues, just part of our landscape, high up on plinths and columns, have been giving the finger to the majority of New Orleanians for generations. Giving the finger to the people who create our vibrant culture and drive our economy, to our celebratory and joyful customs, to the true heart of a diverse, if sometimes fractious port city. To our past and our future.
    For those fellow Americans the monuments are not just decoration but they have a meaning and purpose which all artistic beauty cannot conceal. For them the heroes of the Confederacy are an ongoing justification of the injustices they had to endure as a minority, solely based on their skin color and ethnic background. Everybody knows, that discrimination based on skin color is unfortunately not a distant past and is still relevant in 2017. Or they are a reminder how confederate secession attempts were treason on the original idea of the American Revolution.
    The double horse Jackson-Lee statue is loaded on a flatbed truck Tuesday
    night. 

    In 1967, 22 years after the end of WWII, many, if not most, Germans lived pretty comfortably in their post-war Wirtschaftswunder and saw little reason to poke around in questions of German guilt. It was the year when Alexander Mitscherlich wrote the book "The Inability to Mourn", a book in which the psychoanalyst took psychoanalysis from the level of an individual and transferred it to a nation which he diagnosed to be in some kind of paralysis when it came to digesting the enormity of their past.
    Creating systems of denial and forgetting, the Germans chose not to deal with the past. As a result the German psyche never freed itself from Hitler because it did not go through the rituals that true withdrawal demanded. (A review of the Inability to Mourn)
    As having become a young adult in that period in Germany I remember how this book along with the revolt of my generation staged in the streets of Paris, Rome and Berlin broke open this inability of G... Read Full Article


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    Nikolaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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  • 2.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-18-2017 12:17 PM
    William Faulkner a keen observer of and, by choice, a member of the Southern people said:  "The past is never dead.  It's not even past."  That reality gives ominous meaning to:  "Make America great again."   ...make it as it was in the past.

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    John Nyfeler FAIA, LEED AP
    John Nyfeler, FAIA
    Austin TX
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  • 3.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-21-2017 05:28 PM
    Well said......the attempt to erase the past is futile, it was what it was..... just as the now is what it is.... and the future will be.....

    Danny Boultinghouse, AIA
    Boultinghouse Simpson Gates Architects
    3301 N McColl Road
    McAllen, Texas 78501
    P    956.630.9494
    F    956.630.2058
    C    956.802.0476


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  • 4.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-22-2017 07:53 PM
    As George Orwell famously said, "He who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past." Historical revisionism was pursued with varying degrees of success by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact countries, and Mao's Cultural Revolution, among others. Regardless of individuals' 'moral' positions on these issues, dispatching gaggles of the infantile such as Antifa to destroy the county's historical artifacts must be resisted with all due authority of law.

    WILFRIED TAUBERT AIA
    ARCHITECT

    70 West Burton Place
    Unit 2107
    Chicago, IL 60610
    312.663.1111






  • 5.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-23-2017 06:05 PM
    These are not historical artifacts as much as they are a later set of symbols erected by the turn of the Twentieth Century white supremacist movement. 
     
    The romanticized connection to the actual participants in the Civil War or to the representation of some noble cause and purpose is inaccurate.
     
    David Lynn Wise AIA
    303  446  5965
    1110 East 17th Avenue
    Denver, Colorado   80218





  • 6.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-24-2017 06:31 PM
    I agree.  At a minimum, it should be voted on by the community in who's public spaces these statues stand.  Private space being completely different. Some should stay as they represent the sacrifice made by the common soldier, but the values for which they fought should not be honored in our public square if one believes that all men are created equal.

    Daniel Morales AIA





  • 7.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-24-2017 11:37 AM
    These statues were erected many, many years after the war, and the monuments themselves represent revisionist history. Look at the ceremony when some of these monuments were placed and you will find members of the KKK proudly attending in their white robes. This is not an accurate history at all, and represents a romanticized segregated past.

    The monuments should be removed and stored until they can be placed in museums, where they can be given the historical context so desperately needed. They should NOT be part of the public fabric in our cities and towns. Thank you, Mr. Philipsen, for your thoughtful article on this.

    I find it deeply offensive, Mr. Taubert, that you call the people protesting against these monuments as "gaggles of the infantile". I know some of these protesters and they are thoughtful, passionate, intelligent people who are fighting for equality of representation and against fascism. Do you really want to side with neo-Nazis and the KKK? 

    We are Americans and we can do better than that. We should be conscious of our history and understand it, but also remove offensive statues from our public places so that all of our people can enjoy them, equally.


    ------------------------------
    Kristen Nyht AIA
    Ann Arbor MI
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  • 8.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-28-2017 09:54 AM

    Well stated, Ms Nyht !!

     

     

    Robert C. Ripley, FAIA

    Capitol Administrator

    Office of the Nebraska Capitol Commission

    7th Floor, Nebraska State Capitol
    P.O. Box 94696

    Lincoln, Nebraska 68509-4696

    Desk:     402-471-0419   Fax:  402-471-6952

    email:    bob.ripley@nebraska.gov  website:  http://www.capitol.org

     






  • 9.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-29-2017 11:49 PM
    Hello All ---
     
    After following the recent iteration of protests over statues honoring CSA heavies, I think they should generally be allowed to remain as-is.  They are usually well-executed works of art, but representing quite a collection of evilly-motivated people, typically erected after the Civil War, or around WW I.  Remember that POTUS Wilson himself, held screenings of Birth of a Nation, inside OUR White House!  Yet, he's never been made an "un-person".  Winning the "war to end all wars" (that went well...) surely helped...
     
    I've redd (sic) that even some Black folks prefer that such statues should remain in place, as, indeed, a memory of "what was", understanding that it isn't over yet...
     
    In places where the statues have "gotta go", I like the idea of a CSA Park, or inside a CSA Museum.  That way, they'd be "segregated" from those who'd rather not see them, and segregation was, after all, SO near-&-dear to their creepy little hearts...
     
    Thanks ---
    Bill
    william j. devlin aia, inc.,
    ARCHITECT
    Springfield, MA
    (Home of the only remaining USA Armoury during the Civil War)





  • 10.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-29-2017 04:02 AM
    ​I find this discussion very interesting, timely and appropriate. As architects we are all trained to design the built environment; to shelter, accommodate, house, inspire, and create new and improved environments  for mankind, all in support of, and in recognition of, the natural environment. Monuments and memorials are a societal marker; (a component of the cultural, social, and political history of the people; past, present and future). These monuments; in most cases, were created by artists to inspire, celebrate and symbolize an individual, an event, an era and/or emotion from the public, they purport to represent. Life, like mother nature and the built environment itself all change over time. The term "Life is change!" is true. All things change over time. People change, buildings change, monuments and memorials change too! I've said all this in a simple objective way because these are truisms. Monuments and memorials, in many cases are a reflection of America's past! The social construct of the vast and growing American youth has changed from the America of the past and are, for the most part more cognitive of the truth of America's past; built on Native American genocide, slavery, prejudice, and blatant racism. If monuments and memorials were a true reflection of America's true history there would be many monuments and memorials dedicated to Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and every other ethnic group that helped settle, develop and build this country. Unfortunately, there aren't . The movement to remove the existing civil war monuments and memorials celebrating a painful period in American history needs to be executed. This movement you are witnessing is a cultural revolution, an awakening to the truth of our past history. These Civil War memorials should be preserved but placed in their proper context; not glorified in their current manner. I say these things through the eyes of an African American Architect who grew up during the civil rights era and is a native of Washington, D.C. the home of the Nation's  monuments and memorials. I was one of the design reviewers of the Nation's National Naval Memorial in Washington, D.C. one of the things the design panel had to decide was on the image of the lone sailor statue at that memorial; we collectively decided his physical features had be multicultural in order to reflect all the sailors and seamen who sacrificed their lives for our country. that same design objective spread to the Viet Mam  and World War II Memorials in Washington, D.C.   Life is change...........change is life!

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    Terry Brooks AIA
    President / CEO
    Development Services, LLC
    Washington DC
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  • 11.  RE: Cities and their Monuments

    Posted 08-29-2017 06:35 PM
    Yes Sir Mr. Brooks, Assoc. AIA...!

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    Nelson B. Nave AIA
    Owner
    Nelson Breech Nave, AIA Architect
    Kalamazoo MI
    ------------------------------