On October 31, 2001, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund announced plans to build an underground visitor center near its dramatic, black granite memorial wall on the National Mall in Washington DC. This is the latest in a series of subsurface visitor centers designed to be nearly invisible in their support of military memorials. Some have already been built, some are scheduled for construction, and some never got off the ground.

One of the earliest examples is at the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial near Angel Fire, New Mexico. Built in 1971, this memorial consists of an architecturally stunning, non-denominational chapel that emerges from the earth and reaches skyward with graceful, wing-like walls. In 1982, detailed planning began on a long-overdue and much-needed visitor center. The challenge was how to add a new building near the chapel without spoiling the almost-mystical synergy of the mountain scenery and the unique memorial structure. The solution was found underground.

The visitor center, completed in 1985, is barely visible in a gently sloping hillside below the chapel. A small, square skylight punctuates the grassy field, hinting at something beneath the surface. On the hill's front slope, two concrete-framed portals establish the building's facade. A paved path leads into one of them, where visitors can enter the center. The other portal is less visible; shielded by trees and isolated by a grassy slope, it encloses a private courtyard for the living quarters of Dr. Victor Westphall, the memorial's developer and operator.

The Women in Military Service for America Memorial, built at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, in 1997, is recessed into a hillside behind an ornate retaining wall that was built in 1932. Known as the Hemicycle, the historic granite wall has long been a symbolic gateway to the cemetery. Built in a neo-classical style, it is a 30-foot tall, 200-foot-wide semicircle. Cleaned and repaired, it has been subtly modified to create entryways to the memorial and visitor center that has been created behind it. Entering through the wall, visitors walk into a 37,000-square-foot building. The front room, a long exhibit gallery, curves around the inside face of the Hemicycle. Its roof is an integral part of the memorial, serving as a quiet patio where visitors can look out over the cemetery's rows of white grave markers and also read inscriptions on a series of glass panels that serve as skylights for the building below. At the rear of the narrow patio, the rolling hillside terrain rises to the rooftop level, covering the portions of the building that contain additional exhibits, a gift shop, a 200-seat theater, and administrative spaces.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial consists of a 10-foot-high polished, black granite wall engraved with the names of more than 58,000 service people killed during that war. But it does not rise above the National Mall, it recedes into it. To keep the new 8,000-square-foot visitor center from detracting from the powerful simplicity and low profile of the wall, the center will be hidden underground. The only visible portion will be a small, glass and metal entrance kiosk providing sheltered access to elevators and escalators that lead down to the exhibit spaces and a 50-seat theater.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial was built in 1991 in the area of Washington, DC, known as Judiciary Square. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in that it consists of marble walls on which are inscribed the names of local, state, and national law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty. The sponsors of the memorial are planning to add a 70,000-square-foot museum to provide information on law enforcement history, encourage public safety, and display some of the personal mementoes that have been left at the walls in remembrance of the honorees. In part to avoid intruding on the solemn vista, and in part to fit into a heavily-developed urban environment, a new museum will be located primarily underground. The paved parking lot now occupying the site will become a landscaped garden with a small aboveground portion providing entrance to the museum.

A proposed Air Force Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery will consist of a 50-foot-tall star-shaped sculpture resting on a granite platform. The original plan included a two-story reception and exhibition hall that would nestle unobtrusively under the sculpture and the ground. Ultimately, however, the memorial foundation's board decided to omit the underground portion because of short-term and long-range budgetary constraints.

The initial design for the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, aroused widespread opposition. Not only did it bulge out beyond the tree-lined perimeter of the grassy mall, but it rose 50 feet into the air, "hiding" an associated interpretive center obtrusively within massive earthen embankments. Amid the onslaught of vehement protests, the memorial's sponsors asked its architect to redesign it to fit more appropriately within the treasured mall. The revised design, narrower and more transparent, is recessed 7 feet below street level but contains no underground enclosures.

Aside from the compelling need to protect views of natural scenery and elegant monuments, there is another consideration that makes underground buildings appropriate at war memorials. Perhaps it is most dramatically presented by the Aschrott Brunnen negative-form monument in Kassel, Germany. It was built in 1987 to commemorate a 40-foot-high pyramid-shaped fountain that was destroyed by the Nazis in 1939 because it had been designed by a Jewish artist. To dramatize the 48-year absence of the fountain, artist Horst Hoheisel designed the modern memorial as an inverted image of the original that penetrates down through the plaza rather than rising above it. Glass blocks cover the upturned base of the structure, allowing visitors to see how the hollow white obelisk extends into the earth. Water flows through ground-level channels and runs down over the anti-fountain, creating the sound of rushing water without visible spouts or sprays.

Thanks to David Hunt for permission to use the photos in this article. They were first published on the Kite Aerial Photography E-Resources site.

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