In Washington, D.C. a new triumphal arch may be built across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary. The proposal by architecture firm Harrison Design appears to be the same height—if not taller than—the Lincoln Memorial, which it would face.
News of the arch circulated yesterday after Jim Watson photographed 3D-printed scale models of Harrison Design’s proposal at a meeting in the Oval Office between President Trump and Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb. Reporting in The Washington Post said Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, presented the idea to Trump earlier this year.
Watson’s photograph showed the Lincoln Memorial facing the wrong direction, and the model quickly garnered comparisons to Albert Speer’s unbuilt German Arch of Triumph.
The proposed arch echoes that of Grand Army Plaza Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn, and of course Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. It would have a gold winged angel and two white eagles. Its tentative site is Memorial Circle—a traffic roundabout across the Arlington Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial.
Eric Jenkins, an architect and former educator at the University of Maryland and Catholic University, said the arch stands to “disrupt a symbolic connection” between “the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery’s ‘most hallowed ground.’”
Jenkins, who has taught studios in Rome, and recognizes the virtue and importance of learning from Greco-Roman architectural history, called “contemporary classical architecture” an “oxymoron if there ever was one.”
“Connection is the key—linking, bridging, reconciling. That’s what the Memorial Bridge does. It unites Lincoln’s legacy with Arlington, once home to Robert E. Lee, now a site of national mourning. The arch would more than likely obscure John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame that can be seen from the Lincoln Memorial on dark nights,” Jenkins elaborated. “Inserting a grand, false monument into that axis and space breaks that symbolism. It risks replacing subtlety with spectacle, solemnity with show. Instead of healing, it imposes.”
On Trump’s desk in the Oval Office today was a plan for a triumphal arch on the other side of the river from the Lincoln Memorial pic.twitter.com/PyulIhlmHE
— Danny Kemp (@dannyctkemp) October 9, 2025
The idea is controversial, but it isn’t exactly new per se. The 1901 McMillan Plan by Daniel Burnham, Charles McKim, Frederick Law Olmsted, and other architects dictated that Washington, D.C. should have a memorial similar to Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, but that aspect of the program never materialized.
In 2000, plans were floated to build a triumphal arch at Barney Circle, another roundabout in Northeast Washington, D.C. That year, the National Monuments Foundation (NMF), with support from developer Rodney Cook, proposed Millennium Gate, designed in part by Notre Dame School of Architecture faculty members.
The idea was “the United States should build something at this point in time, at the height of its power, prosperity and influence,” NMF said.
Andy Altman, then director of planning for the National Capital Planning Commission, showed initial support for the proposal, but expressed concerns related to traffic congestion at Barney Circle. Nevertheless, the NFM’s Millennium Gate proposal was quickly left by the wayside after 9/11 and forgotten.
From an urban design lens, Jenkins has similar criticism to Altman of the Memorial Circle proposal, in regard to traffic: “The area isn’t suited for reverent interaction either,” he said. “Anyone who’s driven through knows it’s a traffic maelstrom of cars speeding through from Arlington Boulevard to the bridge. An arch there would be both inaccessible and out of place.”
Catesby Leigh—an art and architecture critic who supports the preservation of Confederate monuments—has advocated for a triumphal arch at Barney Circle, Memorial Circle, and other potential options, culminating in his latest op-ed for The American Mind: “Washington Needs an Arch,” published in April.
Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, a partner and principal at Harrison Design, shared a rendering on social media of a new triumphal arch proposal in September, about one month before the models appeared on President Trump’s desk. Harrison Design has multiple offices across the U.S. including one in Washington, D.C. and a large portfolio of high-end residential work.
The triumphal arch proposal arrives not long after other controversial architectural ideas floated by the Trump administration, such as a new ballroom for the White House. Trump has already redecorated the Oval Office and paved over the Rose Garden.
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