National World War I Memorial (Washington, D.C.)

The National World War I Memorial is a national memorial commemorating the service rendered by members of the United States Armed Forces in World War I. The 2015 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the World War I Centennial Commission to build the memorial in Pershing Park, located at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. The park, which has existed since 1981, also contains the John J. Pershing General of the Armies commemorative work. In January 2016, the design commission selected the submission "The Weight of Sacrifice", by a team consisting of Joseph Weishaar, Sabin Howard, Phoebe Lickwar, and GWWO Architects, as the winning design, Entitled A Soldier's Journey, the relief sculpture was dedicated on September 14, 2024. Standing on the western end of the memorial, it depicts the journey of a soldier leaving home and fighting in the war before returning to his family. The memorial was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2025. In 2016, David Rubin Land Collective replaced Forge as landscape architects for the project. Growing pressure to preserve M. Paul Friedberg’s design for Pershing Park while acknowledging the extent of the park as the national memorial required a balanced approach inserting new elements of commemoration and managed change of the original modernist construct. Although the project had met “concept approval”

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