Repair Work on Jefferson, Lincoln Memorials to Begin

Beginning Monday and for the next three to five years, parts of the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials will be shadowed by scaffolding and fencing while the National Park Service undertakes a massive project to inspect, document and repair the two structures.

The work will infringe on two of the city’s most scenic and photographed vistas--the Lincoln Memorial framed in the Reflecting Pool, and the Jefferson Memorial rising from the edge of the shimmering Tidal Basin--and will limit but not block visitors’ access to the interior of each.

The $22-million project was planned even before pieces from two of the Jefferson Memorial’s 42-foot columns broke off and crashed to the floor last year.

“The memorials are not falling down. They are structurally sound,” Park Service spokeswoman Sandra Alley said Friday. “This is to ensure that they are there for future generations to enjoy.”

Preliminary studies of the two monuments, released in April, 1990, recommended the tests to assess and repair damage caused by acid rain, insects, jet exhaust and other factors.

James Kren of the Park Service, who is overseeing part of the project, said the detailed inspection also is expected to reveal more about “how the buildings appear and were built.”

The inner chambers of both memorials--including the 19-foot-tall marble statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln and the 19-foot-tall bronze figure of Thomas Jefferson--will remain open to visitors throughout the work, Alley said.

The work will be the first time that the exterior of either memorial has been covered to any extent--including time of war--since the two opened, the Lincoln Memorial in 1922 and the Jefferson Memorial in 1943.

The Lincoln Memorial and the nearby Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial are the most popular National Park Service structures, with more than 1.2 million visitors a year. The Jefferson Memorial attracts more than 750,000 visitors annually.

The project will include visual inspections of all of the stones in both memorials and sophisticated computer-assisted photography that will generate detailed drawings of the precise carving and condition of all of the stones to identify any needed repairs, Alley said.

“We don’t expect to find any major problems,” she said, “but there will be repairs to individual stones.”

Workers on Monday will begin to install heavy, six-foot-tall chain-link fences around the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials that will block access to the terraces around each, as well as the open colonnades that encircle each memorial, Kren said.