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Marine Corps War Memorial, Newly Opened Grounds, Arlington, 1950s — Archive & Atlas
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Marine Corps War Memorial, Arlington, Virginia, USA

Marine Corps War Memorial, Newly Opened Grounds, Arlington, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-CAEC24

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The Marine Corps War Memorial had been dedicated in November 1954, and someone arrived shortly after to document it while the landscaping crew was still on the clock. Felix de Weldon's six bronze Marines strain at a flagpole flying an actual American flag — the one permanent operational touch the designers insisted on — while in the foreground a groundskeeper's tractor and gang mower sit parked mid-job on bare, churned earth that has not yet become the manicured lawn it was destined to be. The young saplings staked around the perimeter are doing their best to look like a completed park, and the apartment block visible to the right in Rosslyn was already the tallest thing in the neighborhood. The memorial was built to remind every generation of the Battle of Iwo Jima, but this particular visitor caught it at the one moment it also doubled as a construction site. The tractor in front of the world's most famous flag-raising is not an irony the dedication committee planned for.

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Archive & Atlas — The Archive AA-2026-CAEC24 · jpg · Open