John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial

The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial is a monument to United States president John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas, United States, erected in 1970, and designed by noted architect Philip Johnson.

Design

The John F. Kennedy Memorial was the first memorial by famed American architect and Kennedy family friend Philip Johnson, and was approved by Jacqueline Kennedy. Johnson called it "a place of quiet refuge, an enclosed place of thought and contemplation separated from the city around, but near the sky and earth." Dallas raised $200,000 for the memorial by August 1964, entirely from 50,000 individual donations contributed by private citizens.

Cenotaph

Philip Johnson's design is a cenotaph, or empty tomb, that symbolizes the freedom of Kennedy's spirit. The memorial is a square, roofless room, tall and square with two narrow openings facing north and south. The walls consist of 72 white precast concrete columns, most of which end above the earth.

Epitaph

Two dark granite squares are set in the plaza surrounding the memorial, each approximately from the narrow entrances to the cenotaph.

File:JFK Memorial Dallas.jpg|John F. Kennedy Memorial

File:The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial, a monument to U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas LCCN2015631021.tif|Narrow openings north and south

File:The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial, a monument to U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas LCCN2015631186.tif|Inside the cenotaph

File:The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial, a monument to U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas LCCN2015631022.tif|Low granite square

File:Dallas January 2016 02 (John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial).jpg|John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Plaza in January 2016

File:JFK Memorial Dallas 1.JPG|With visitors, for scale

File:John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial by Philip Johnson, Dallas, Texas (41064846695).jpg|Plaza and granite marker

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History

Dallas County Judge Lew Sterrett was credited as the first to propose a monument to Kennedy on November 24, 1963, two days after the assassination. However, other Dallas civic leaders, including former mayor R.L. Thornton, said the memorial was better placed in Washington D.C., attempting to distance Dallas from the infamy it had gained as the assassination site. On February 22, 1964, the committee announced that two memorials would be created: one at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and another "dignified and modest memorial near the assassination site". The location near the Old Red Courthouse was chosen in April 1964. The original location, announced as the block bounded by Main, Elm, Record, and Market streets, was shifted to another plaza one block south bounded by Main, Record, Market, and Commerce.

Committee member Stanley Marcus flew to New York and successfully asked Philip Johnson to take on the memorial design, which he did for no fee. Johnson's proposal model was shown to the Committee in December 1964, and the Committee formally announced the design on December 12, hoping to demolish the existing buildings and have the memorial ready by November 1968, the fifth anniversary of the assassination. It was finally dedicated on June 24, 1970, in a ceremony attended by 300 people. In mid 1999, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza undertook management of the memorial, rallying the support of Dallas County and the City of Dallas. The Museum became caretaker of the monument and launched a full-scale restoration project aimed at preserving the memorial and its history. Philip Johnson, the original architect for the monument, guided the restoration process implemented by Corgan Associates, Inc. and Phoenix I Restoration and Construction, Ltd. Numerous local suppliers donated the labor, materials, and equipment required to return the memorial to its original beauty. In 2000, a panel of experts wrote an explanation of the memorial to satisfy the public.

Critical reception

Soon after the Kennedy Memorial was completed, Gary Cartwright wrote in 1971 for The New York Times the "memorial seems esthetically spare, even forbidding", true to the concept proposed by Johnson.

Architectural critic Witold Rybczynski wrote in 2006 that the monument is "poorly done", likening its precast concrete slab walls to "mammoth Lego blocks", and commented that Kennedy "deserved better than this". On the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster called the monument "a disappointing product of the city's ambivalent response to the events of November 1963" and said that Johnson lacked "an animating vision that might have produced an inspiring design. This, in turn, was compounded by a lack of experience". Lamster also noted the similarities between Johnson's design and the unrealized Neue Wache redesign proposal for a war memorial in Berlin, created in 1930 by Mies van der Rohe.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne echoed these prior criticisms in 2013, stating the memorial "symbolizes the city's deep ambivalence about commemorating the assassination. A spare cenotaph, or open tomb, designed to be built in marble, it was instead cast in cheaper concrete. And its location east of the assassination site suggested an effort to tuck the history of that day away."

References

Bibliography

Brosio, M.D. (2016). The JFK Memorial and Power in America. Createspace Publishing. .

External links

Remembering the Kennedy Memorial
JFK Memorial Plaza Marker
JFK Memorial