The story below is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
In the 1940s, Roanoke was divided over how to honor its fallen soldiers.
Roanokers, like the rest of the nation, sought to memorialize its war dead following victories over the Axis powers in World War II. Civic groups, veterans’ organizations and business leaders advanced grand ideas for such memorials prompting Roanoke City Council to appoint a War Memorial Committee to sift through the various proposals. If any of the leading ideas had been adopted, Roanoke would look quite different today.
The earliest plan was advanced by the Roanoke Woman’s Club several months prior to the end of the war. Mrs. D. P. Hylton, club president, appeared before city council in the fall of 1944 and again in January 1945 advocating the construction of monumental tower on Mill Mountain. Using Catawba stone, the six-story structure would be capped by an observation deck and light. On the ground floor, rooms with the names of Roanoke’s fallen soldiers, war trophies and historic artifacts pertaining to the Roanoke Valley would greet visitors as they entered a large foyer.
The surrounding grounds would be designated as Memorial Park complete with a neon sign that would be perched on the rim of the mountain’s overlook to promote the monument. Once completed, the woman’s club envisioned other amenities for the mountain’s top to include formal gardens, a fern house, bird sanctuary and a club house for musical and artistic performances. The club had received a suggestion from local servicemen in the Pacific that an amphitheatre be constructed overlooking the city.
Hylton summarized her club’s vision, “The modern trend of thinking of a memorial is that of a living memorial, something which would give service, beauty and pleasure to families and the communities from which our heroes went.”
The woman’s club idea was the most ambitious of all that had been received by the War Memorial Committee. Other proposals were for a Victory Park at Victory Stadium, a memorial room in the armory and several recreation-themed projects. Dr. Hugh Trout, chair of the 14-person committee, had his work cut out for him.
In August 1946, the War Memorial Committee formally recommended the woman’s club plan to Roanoke City Council. The tower would cost an estimated $250,000 ($3.8 million today) and the funds would be raised through public donations. The committee retained the renowned architect Theodore Younger with Eggers & Higgins in New York, the architectural firm that had designed the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. Younger visited the Mill Mountain site in January 1947 to begin his work. Within months, however, the plan received opposition such that a revised, even grander proposal was offered.
In the April 6, 1948, edition of The Roanoke Times, an architectural concept for converting Elmwood Park into a war memorial was published. The three-phased development envisioned a new library at the northwest corner; a war monument, akin to the Jefferson Memorial, on the center knoll; and a fine arts and performance hall at the southwest corner. Roanoke architects B. N. Eubank and A. A. Farnham had drafted the plan, which encompassed the entirety of Elmwood Park, for the committee. Younger remained on retainer as a consultant.
The Elmwood Park plan was presented to city council by the War Memorial Committee at an estimated cost of $900,000 ($11.1 million today), which did not include the new library as that was already funded. The project would take three years and be underwritten by a public capital campaign. The war monument, the centerpiece both literally and figuratively, would contain a lighted globe 43 feet in diameter. On its face all the major battlegrounds would be indicated and illuminated.
Following the committee’s presentation, the plan was immediately broadsided by J. N. Fishburn, representing the Roanoke Recreation Association, who opposed any further encroachment upon the park’s grounds beyond the new library. Arthur Taubman, a member of the War Memorial Committee, responded that making the park a war memorial would better preserve it as public space. Mrs. Harold Dove, president of the Roanoke Woman’s Club, also rose in opposition asserting that the park was too small to accommodate three large structures. The war memorial quickly became a political football in the hands of a wearied city council.
Following a public hearing and tweaks to the plan by the War Memorial Committee, the plan for Elmwood Park was formally adopted by Roanoke City Council on May 31, 1948. Success was then placed in the hands of the committee to raise the private funding. The campaign was hampered from the beginning by a divided public and over time the fundraising effort fell short. Thus, the war memorial in Elmwood Park became a footnote in Roanoke’s history.
If either plan had succeeded, Roanoke would look quite different. If the Roanoke Woman’s Club tower had been erected on Mill Mountain, it would have occupied the site where an old search tower used to be. In 1949 that site became home to the Mill Mountain Star, meaning the “Star City of the South” would in all likelihood not have what became and remains its signature symbol.
The story above is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
