Presidential memorials: They all like Ike GEORGE WASHINGTON'S obelisk was boring, Lincoln's temple ostentatious and Jefferson's pantheon uninspired. So said critics of the capital's great memorials at the time they were built. Frank Gehry knew all that when he was asked to design a memorial for Dwight Eisenhower, the five-star general who became America's 34th president. Best known for swirling ziggurats of titanium, Mr Gehry seemed an odd choice to take on the modest Ike. But in 2010 his plan won the unanimous support of a commission set up to oversee the memorial. Then the trouble started. It became clear that Mr Gehry's design would focus on Eisenhower's humble roots. This riled conservatives, who said it would diminish the president's legacy. Worse still, Eisenhower's family agreed. They worried that Mr Gehry's proposed representation of the president as a child would overshadow the depiction of what he did as an adult. The criticism did not end there. The commission had selected an awkward site for the memorial; a four-acre plot surrounded by drab office buildings. So Mr Gehry planned to erect metal mesh screens or "tapestries" around it. Those accustomed to stone pillars were shocked by this modern element. At a congressional hearing in March, Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, said the tapestries reminded some people of the Iron Curtain, or Nazi death camps. "That was the point at which I could have left the stage," Mr Gehry told the Washington Post. But in May the architect doubled down on his original concept, unveiling a redesign that kept the tapestries while adding statues. Nothing like good old-fashioned heroic figures to accentuate Eisenhower's legacy as an army chief and a statesman. The Eisenhower family remains unsatisfied, raising tricky questions about how much say, if any, it should have. Others have taken the family's side, including some members of Congress who have tried to cut off funding for the memorial. Sensing a crisis, the commission has put everything on hold while Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, tries to defuse it. Whether or not Mr Gehry's design is out of keeping with the modest general, all this fuss certainly is.