The Washington skyline may soon change with the addition of a massive “Independence Arch” across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial, a dramatic monument proposed by President Trump to mark America’s 250th anniversary.

Supporters hail it as bold. Critics call it self-aggrandizing. When asked about the project, President Trump quipped that it is for him.

Whatever is intended by the memorial and the symbolism of its location, it will be the American people who ultimately decide what this monument means.

Despite claims that “every time somebody rides over that beautiful bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, they literally say, something is supposed to be here,” the proposed site — Memorial Circle, at the Virginia end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge — is not a blank canvas.

For a century, Lincoln’s temple to freedom and Lee’s former plantation — Arlington House, once home to the Confederate general Robert E. Lee — have faced each other across the river in a dialogue about emancipation, slavery and reunion. The bridge that joins them was meant to symbolically and literally join the North and South.

The National Park Service

© The Hill