More than 116,000 Americans died during The World War I Centennial Commission celebrated the groundbreaking of the National World War I Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue, more than a decade after the effort to build it began. The groundbreaking comes more than a century after the war ended with the Treaty of Versailles. The Centennial Commission was founded in 2013, and the following year, Congress authorized the construction of a memorial on Pershing Park, a 1.8-acre site just one block from the White House. The Centennial Commission recently ng the First World War, dubbed The War To End All Wars because of its soaring casualty rate, but it has not received the same popular culture attention as World War II. That appears to be changing.
$40 million was raised to for construction of the memorial which will a bronze sculpture entitled A Soldier’s Journey, is expected to take about another three years. The sculpture will stretch nearly 60 feet long and feature 38 human figures running horizontally to show a sequence of events.
D2 will be performing all of the excavation and site clearing for this historic project.
