Donald Trump reportedly wants the arch he is planning to build in Washington DC to dwarf the Lincoln Memorial.
The US president envision the planned arch to be a height of 250ft, or significantly taller than the 100ft-tall Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. It would also be significantly taller than Paris’s 164ft-tall Arc de Triomphe – but less than half the height than the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri, the world’s tallest arch.
The Post reported that Trump has his eye on a plot of land near Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, citing two people who are familiar with the plans and spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity.
The latest proposed addition to the Washington skyline comes as Trump is already constructing a new East Wing to the White House containing a ballroom. At 89,000 sq ft, the new ballroom is supposed to be larger than the White House’s 55,000-sq-ft footprint, at the same 70ft height.
The scale of Trump’s envisioned arch, named the Independence Arch, has already alarmed some architectural experts, including one who initially supported a smaller arch.
“I don’t think an arch that large belongs there,” Catesby Leigh, an art critic who conceived of a more modest arch in a 2024 essay, told the Post. Leigh’s idea was reportedly brought to Trump by allies of the president’s administration.
Leigh had initially proposed a temporary, 60ft arch to mark the 250th of the US’s declaration of independence. But Trump went for a permanent design four times larger and funded with leftover donations to the $400m White House ballroom project.
“If you’re going to build an arch that big, you should build it in another part of town – and one possible site that comes to mind is Barney Circle,” Leigh was quoted by the outlet as saying. Barney Circle in south-east Washington DC overlooks the Anacostia River.
“There’s nothing around it competing with it,” Leigh added.
But Leigh also recommended an architect, Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, who in September posted enthusiastically on Twitter/X: “America needs a triumphal arch!” together with a rendering. Charbonneau reportedly has since been retained by the White House to work on the project.
But the site of the proposed arch on a small plot of land that is under the jurisdiction of the US national park service. It lies between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery and could reshape the existing relationship between the two memorials as well as obstruct pedestrians’ views.
It could also be thematically jarring to plant a celebratory arch on Memorial Circle – amid the sightline of Arlington national cemetery, the Memorial Bridge (envisioned as symbolic representation of peace between the Union and Confederacy after the Civil War) and the Lincoln Memorial.
The chairperson of Benedictine College’s architecture program, John Haigh, told the Post: “It’s a very somber corridor”.
Trump has reportedly considered more modest arch designs, including 165-ft-high and 123-ft-high versions, that he shared at a dinner in 2025. But the president has decided to go big in part because 250ft mirrors the 250th anniversary of the US’s declaration of independence in July.
People at the dinner quoted Trump as saying: “250 for 250 makes the most sense.”
Trump is said to have told guests at a White House Christmas reception, “The one that people know mostly is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. And we’re gonna top it by, I think, a lot.”
The idea for an enormous arch in Washington DC is not entirely new. Trump told Politico in December that he hoped to begin construction of the arch within two months. Earlier in January, he posted images to his Truth Social platform of three potential designs, including one with gold gilding.
The Post noted that Washington is unusual among major cities for lacking a triumphal arch to commemorate national achievements.
Atlanta philanthropist and developer Rodney Mims Cook Jr, president of the National Monuments Foundation, has been appointed by Trump to the Commission of Fine Arts that would in theory oversee the arch.
