One of our favorite monuments in this city is the District of Columbia’s World War I Memorial, honoring those from the capital who fought and died in the Great War. This DCist’s late great uncle, who grew up in Foggy Bottom before George Washington University gobbled it all up, was a World War I vet. So we stop by when ever we stroll through West Potomac Park.

On our Fourth of July tour of the Mall, we wanted to take a step inside the simple monument that remembers World War I, a simple peristyle Doric temple built in 1931 off Independence Avenue that today sits between the World War II and the Korean War memorials.

But on Monday, as thousands of tourists visiting their capital streamed by a few yards away on the Independence Avenue sidewalk, the memorial was closed off to the public. D.C.’s World War I vets don’t have a Tom Hanks nor a Tom Brokaw fighting to preserve the memories of one of the 20th century’s darkest periods. Plus as a D.C. civic memorial, and not a national memorial, there isn’t a broad constituency to fight for its interests.

The National Park Service’s decision to close off the monument on Independence Day, testifies to the general lack of respect the memorial gets. (It doesn’t seem too much to ask to bring out surplus fencing to surround the monument and connect it to the sidewalk. If the World War II memorial was open for much of the day before the fireworks, surely the World War I could have been accommodated as well.)

The memorial’s lack of upkeep has attracted the attention on the D.C. Preservation League, which in 2003 named the World War I Memorial one of the most endangered landmarks in the city.