New Visitor Center at Arlington Cemetery

Frank J. Correia of Toronto looked over the visitors center at Arlington National Cemetery one day recently and shrugged his shoulders: “It’s a little shopworn. But I guess it’s served over a lot of years.”

No one is arguing.

Consisting of two sheds connected by a short breezeway, what passes for the visitors center at the Arlington Cemetery was built 20 years ago as a temporary facility.

Last year, it served 4 million visitors.

But things will soon change dramatically.

After two decades of planning, a $6-million visitors center is under construction. The new building will have two stories, one underground, and will be capped by a rounded, soaring skylight. It will accommodate up to 2,000 people at a time, and all will be indoors, unlike at the current center, where the guests are largely exposed to the elements.

The building and an $11-million tiered parking structure are scheduled to open by October, said Raymond J. Costanzo, superintendent of the cemetery.

The center will supply tourists with brochures and the maps that seem to be constantly in short supply. The facility, which is closer to the Arlington Cemetery Metrorail stop than is the current center, also will serve as the boarding point for the Tourmobiles that loop the 612-acre cemetery.

The outdated visitors center and present parking lot will be demolished to make way for 9,000 new grave sites in the cemetery, Costanzo said. There are now 210,000 graves, with room for 66,000 more.

A new access road will connect the visitors center to Memorial Drive, solving a problem that has long bothered cemetery officials: how to separate the flow of tourists from the daily funeral processions.

An average of 15 funerals a day are held at Arlington. Now, tourists coming to the visitors center use the same paths as funeral processions. When the new facility is finished, the two groups will travel in opposite directions, Constanzo said.

Until the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Civil War-era cemetery had made do without a visitors facility. Tourists obtained information at the cemetery’s administration building.

Kennedy’s burial in Arlington caused a dramatic rise in the number of visitors. In 1962, about 2 million people visited Arlington Cemetery. In 1964, the year after Kennedy was buried there, there were 7 million visitors.

“The President’s burial affected the notoriety of Arlington perhaps more than anything in its history,” said Thomas L. Sherlock, one of the cemetery’s two historians.

“Arlington continues to be in the nation’s eye,” Sherlock said. Two of the Challenger astronauts are buried there along with other famous Americans such as civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Army Gens. Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall, and Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and William O. Douglas.

The rules governing who can be buried at Arlington were tightened in 1968. Those now eligible include members of the military who die on active duty, those who retired with 20 or more years of service, winners of the Medal of Honor or other high military decorations, some who received medical discharges and elected officials who served in the military.

The master plan for the renovation of the cemetery facilities has been in the works for 20 years, Costanzo said.

A new administration building was constructed in 1975, and a columbarium to hold cremated remains was built in 1980 and is now being expanded. On the drawing board are plans for new maintenance facilities, completion of the cemetery walls and improvements to the Custis-Lee walk.

The plans for the visitors center were “in our budget a good 10 years prior to getting final approval,” said Costanzo, who diplomatically added that Congress and various administrations “were sympathetic to our need, it was just a balance against other national needs.”