Architecture for a Public Client: The Monuments and Chapels of the American Battle Monuments Commission

Abstract

Eleven prominent architects designed the 19 monuments and chapels that the American Battle Monuments Commission erected in Europe for the United States government after World War I. The records of the commission are used to reconstruct the client's interests and relation with the architects. The designs of Paul P. Cret, John Russell Pope, Egerton Swartwout, Louis Ayres, and George Howe are analyzed in terms of each architect's interpretation of the commission's program and the range of architectural concerns represented by this important American undertaking of the late 1920s.