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Robert E. Beach Architects, LLC,  whom you can find in Booth #816 at the upcoming Capital Remodel + Garden Show, is a Falls Church, VA, architectural firm specializing in commercial, residential and institutional architecture and redevelopment strategies, with a focus on energy efficiency and sustainability.  

 

Firm principal, Bob Beach, established Robert E. Beach Architects, LLC in 1989. He is well known for his work around the region but there is a historic site project that has his current attention. He is the architect of the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial and Gardens now in its construction phase in Occoquan Regional Park, Lorton, VA.

 

Bob reminds that Fairfax County has a significant history in the fight for women’s suffrage in the United States. In 1917, scores of suffragists were imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse for picketing the Woodrow Wilson White House for the right to vote.  The reports of inhumane conditions, beatings and force-feeding at the workhouse electrified the country and became a major turning point in the struggle to win the vote. Thus, the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial will be dedicated on the centennial anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment, August 26, 2020.  

 

Bob says, “The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial will be a visual symbol and educational tool to elevate these little-known women to their proper place in history for engineering the greatest expansion of democracy in a single day the world had ever seen.”     

 

He explains that his design will allow visitors to experience the memorial from successive points of view. The journey will start at a replica street side plaza, reflective of the White House where the suffragists stood as “silent sentinels” picketing for women’s right to vote. Inside the gates, across the plaza, visitors will view the Suffragist Commemorative Wall that chronicles each woman jailed during this period. The central element of the plaza is a six-column rotunda with an entablature ring open to the sky symbolizing the principles and goals of the movement. 

 

Bob says that the flow of the plaza plan form will be interrupted by a river rock arroyo symbolizing the chasm between women and men concerning voting rights and where the Turning Point Bridge immortalizes the events that became the watershed in the struggle.

 

Three bronze, life-sized statues of suffrage leaders will be included in the memorial, including Alice Paul, co-founder of the National Woman’s Party and author of the Equal Rights Amendment, Mary Church Terrell, co-founder of the NACCP, and professor Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and founder of the League of Women Voters. The courageous efforts of the suffragists are expressed along the Turning Point Plaza through 19 informational stations that curate the entire seventy year suffrage movement, 1848-1920.

 

Bob explains that the memorial is designed to stimulate thought and foster dialogue to promote humanitarian and democratic values through connections between the history of the suffragist movement and its contemporary implications. 

 

Learn more about this unique displays and how the innovative team at Robert E. Beach Architects, LLC,  can help with your home projects. Visit Booth #816 at the Capital Remodel + Garden Show, February 21-23 at the Dulles Expo Center.