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Sometime in the next several weeks, if all goes as planned, 159 huge blocks of granite will be loaded aboard ships in the seaport of Xiamen, China, for an 11,000-mile journey to Washington.Bound for a site on the Tidal Basin, the cargo includes one block that bears the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr. and the dreams of generations of African Americans.
The other blocks -- which weigh as much as 55 tons each -- make up the rest of the mammoth, three-part sculpture that is the centerpiece of the $120 million memorial to the slain civil rights leader. Assembly is scheduled to begin this year.
More than a decade in the making, finally "it's here," said Ed Jackson Jr., the project's executive architect.
The memorial, the first on the Mall honoring an African American, also will be a monumental construction project.
It will require erecting one of the biggest figurative sculptures in Washington -- a three-story-tall relief of King -- atop a landscape of compressed mud. (The carving of King's head alone weighs 46 tons.)
It will require driving more than 300 concrete piles as deep as 50 feet through the dirt to support the monument's foundation. This must be done without damaging the adjacent Tidal Basin seawall, which has already sunk into the muck at the Jefferson Memorial across the basin. A multimillion-dollar seawall repair project is underway there.
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