Maintenance of Temporary Edifice
The structure as built in 1919 was not expected to stand for more than two years — the time it would take for Newport News to see its last returning soldier. The arch ended up standing for over forty years. During that period, the City Council for Newport News ended up appropriating more money for maintenance of the arch — approximately seven thousand dollars — than it took to build it originally. Although Newport News served as a Port of Embarkation again during World War II, returning troops did not march under the arch, in part because of its fragile condition.
The arch also suffered from the development of the city around it. The area became subject to commercial development, so much so that at one point each side of the arch sat on the property of a different gas station. Passersby were subject to falling stucco and dangers from the traffic pattern surrounding the arch that made it into a 50-foot tall blind spot. Parts of the structure began to collapse after rotting through.
Read more about this topic: Newport News Victory Arch
Famous quotes containing the words maintenance of, maintenance, temporary and/or edifice:
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“Chamberlain’s visit to Hitler today may bring things to a head or may result in a temporary postponement of what looks to me like an inevitable conflict within the next five years.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)