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American cities and combined functionality with aesthetic enhancement. These improvements <br /> spoke to a community's civic pride and promoted patriotic spirit. The public sculpture inspired <br /> by the City Beautiful Movement was meant to inspire the viewer with high ideals and to convey <br /> the message of order, unity, and progress (Bach 1992; Bogart 1989). Public sculpture, along <br /> with public parks, was seen as a way of civilizing the public (Crantz 1980). <br /> The enhancement of public space with memorials for World War 1 became a common <br /> practice of communities across the nation following the War. The United States was claiming a <br /> role as a world super power, and cities were trying to establish what it meant to be a great <br /> American city. Memorials were built to honor the veterans of the War, those that had perished, <br /> and to glorify the patriotic spirit of an emerging nation power. Erica Doss (2010) in Memorial <br /> Mania: Public Feeling in America describes a debate around the form that such memorials <br /> would take in the public square. Should they be a work of art like a sculpture or a monument <br /> recognizing those that sacrificed for the sake of the nation or, on the other hand, take the form of <br /> a functional interactive feature such as a park, a band shell, swimming pool, or playground? The <br /> switch to more active functional war memorials was due, in part, to the proliferation of"ready- <br /> made"war monuments to the war hero. Some authors theorize that active recreation became <br /> valued over the passive contemplation of allegorical sculpture as a way to generate uplift as well <br /> as provide social control, especially in the immigrant population (Bach 1992; Bogart 1989). The <br /> other debate was about the social political message that the public feature should convey: should <br /> it be celebratory, conciliatory, focus on the human cost of the war, or be about seeking <br /> international peace in the future (Senie and Webster 1992)? This is the mixed message of war <br /> and such debates on how we depict such events from our history continue to this day. <br /> 44 <br />