Alli Davis | Arlington National Cemetery, Architectural History

Alli Davis (MSHP '21) shares her summer internship experience:

"This summer, I had the novel experience of interning at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It is one of the most prominent and well-known military cemeteries in the nation, with more than 400,000 active duty service members, veterans, and their families interred there. Over 3,000 funerals and memorial ceremonies are held annually, and over 3 million visitors arrive each year. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic created very unusual circumstances and ANC closed its doors in April to visitors except for family members with visiting passes and funeral or memorial service attendees. Funerals were also reduced in frequency and attendees. Three other interns and I had the opportunity to experience ANC without the throngs of tourists and were therefore able to work in high profile areas during the day as a result. I joined the team of interns as one of two Architectural Historians.

In 2014, the Arlington National Cemetery Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places. As part of the compliance with National Register status, the other architectural historian intern and I performed a condition assessment survey of over 130 features within ANC and its additional property, the Soldiers’ and Armen’s Home National Cemetery. The fieldwork included a visual assessment with formalized infield condition notes and photographic documentation. Each survey was completed by updating previous year reports or creating new reports for newly added features. We made significant improvements to the reports and their organization and added about 10 new features to the list. We gave each feature a condition rating of Good, Fair, or Poor, and a deficiency rating of Minor, Severe, or Critical, and provided treatment recommendations based on the National Park Service’s preservation briefs. From the ratings, we created a prioritized list for ANC to address.

We also fulfilled requirements from a Programmatic Agreement between ANC, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR), the Department of Transportation, the Air Force, and other stakeholders for ANC’s Southern Expansion Project. This project includes the demolition of a large, modern maintenance complex and disassembly of a section of the southern boundary wall. Our duties for this project were to perform a selective survey and document the maintenance complex and enter the information into the DHR’s online Cultural Resources Information Systems database.

Other secondary tasks of the internship required us to create a non-character defining features survey (as opposed to the character defining features) and a historic lighting fixture survey of the Memorial Amphitheater to support the HABS Historic Structures Report. We were also able to assist the conservation interns with some treatments around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers Memorial Plaza.

At the end of the summer, we presented the results of our internships to prominent Cemetery executives, including the Chief of Staff and Chief Engineer, to demonstrate the necessity and importance of the work, as well as point out some universal practices within ANC that accelerate the damage to many of their historic features. Overall, I found the internship rewarding, and our supervisors, Tom Vitanza and Rebecca Stevens, were enthusiastic about how important our work was for Arlington National Cemetery. I learned a great deal about the intricacies of inter-agency collaboration between the National Park Service and the Army Corps of Engineers, which I hope will inform my future career."