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:
“However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree.... Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to its value as well as to its ornament.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)