Macaluso, Laura A. The Public Artscape of New Haven : Themes in the Creation of a City Image. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2018. (162-163)
As Kirk Savage writes in Monument Wars, the middle of the twentieth century–an era of acknowledged American military achievement–coincided with years of decline for the public memorializing process (for example, the National World War II Memorial was not built on the Mall until 2004). This is true at the local as well as national level. During the World War Il era and afterward cities such as New Haven produced multiple small installations such as “Honor Rolls” in wood and bronze (see the Honor Roll at the Knights of Columbus Museum (1947]) but, nothing on a monumental scale until, as Savage writes, the “Vietnam Veterans Memorial … reinvigorate[d] the American tradition of the war memorial and rekindle[d] public and scholarly interest in the whole phenomenon of monument building.” War monuments and memorials created around the country after Lin’s design was installed on the Mall in 1982 are thus inheritors of this seismic change-whether they purposefully reference her work, or, as in the case of the second Vietnam veterans monument on the Mall, The Three Soldiers by Frederick E. Hart (1984) stand in direct contrast to it; New Haven’s own example of late twentieth-century war memorializing specifically for the Vietnam War falls somewhere in between.
It is not hard to see the impact Lin’s design had on the City of New Haven’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, installed in 1988 on a one mile long strip of land cosseted by Long Island Sound and I-95 called Long Wharf (named for the Colonial era wharf extended by African-American William Lanson in 1810-1812). Sponsored by the New Haven Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee and designed by veteran Kenneth Polanski and architect Frank Pannenborg, the installation consists of multiple parts-which is not apparent upon first glance at the striking colossal black granite V, whose backdrop is Long Island Sound.
The black granite façade of the monument is inscribed with the names of 55 area residents killed during service to the “Republic of Vietnam” (a bronze medallion replicating the Vietnam Service Medal is also inserted here). The polished black granite is highly reflective, akin to Lin’s choice of material. The wide open V shape of Lin’s design-which some saw as a gash in the earth-here stands vertical, a literal reference, but to what? According to Pannenborg, an architect who spent his career working for the City of New Haven, the memorial committee intended the V to represent Vietnam but also veterans, as well as echoing wars past in the form of Winston Churchill’s famous “V for Victory” two-fingered gesture from World War II. The starkness of the design, the darkness of the stone and the lack of figural or allegorical representation, was a distinct shift from earlier forms of war memorializing. Reflective of its 1980s genesis is the addition of the names of three men who were POW-MIA (Prisoners-of-War/Missing-in-Action). The monument quickly became a central meeting place for POW-MIA gatherings, bolstered by the fact that its location directly off of I-95 was already a draw for people.
Pannenborg describes the genesis of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a unique moment in urban planning in New Haven. During the administration of Mayor Biagio DiLieto (1980-1989), a new sub-organization of the City Plan Department was created called the Office of Downtown and Harbor Development, whose role was to expedite development projects in the harbor, including land which had passed out of U.S. Navy management to the City of New Haven in the 1960s. One of the focus projects of the office was the development of Long Wharf Park, renamed Veterans Memorial Park in the 1980s, due to the efforts of a vocal Vietnam veterans group that included Gold Star parents from the New Haven region and veterans themselves. According to Pannenberg, the group clearly desired the placement of a memorial in the park, and one member of the committee, Kenneth Polanski, produced the model of the black granite V, although his design featured serifs at the top of the letterform. Working with the committee, Pannenborg removed the serifs from the letterform to make it “more abstract” and powerful in form-which he believes also made the V resemble a colossal gun sight. While working with city engineers to lay out the installation in the park, Pannenborg further recognized that New Haven and Vietnam, located in different hemispheres, are on similar longitude lines, which the “sight” points towards. Following this discovery, the architect had a cement pathway with a bronze line inserted on the longitude line, which became the pedestrian passage to the memorial.
The location of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become a collecting point for more war memorials placed by various groups with assistance from the City Plan Department. While Pannenborg describes this layering as “diluting” the effect of the original design (city employees also placed berms and trees —which all died—at two sides of the walkway to the memorial), the continual use of the site, including a second Vietnam Memorial demonstrates the collective need to continue memorializing, and the draw of this public location between harbor and highway. The second memorial recognizes all Vietnam veterans from New Haven and the surrounding towns of East Haven; West Haven; North Haven; Hamden; Orange and Woodbridge and like Frederick Hart’s figural addition to Maya Lin’s abstract design, the memorial features three figures grouped together (although they are engraved into the stone, and not three-dimensional). Placed in this area of the park are also memorials for the Korean War, Purple Heart recipients, and the most recent, a War on Terror memorial with the names of four soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 102nd Infantry inscribed-and space for many more.
CAPTION: Veterans Memorial Park (Long Wharf Park) Memorials, include (from left), Korean War Memorial/59th Parallel; War on Terror Memorial/1st Battalion, 102nd Regiment; second Vietnam Veterans Memorial for soldiers in surrounding New Haven County towns. and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Veterans Memorial Park. Long Wharf. (The black box in front houses lighting.) Also in this area, but not seen in the image, is the Purple Heart Memorial (City of New Haven).
