The Women in Military Service for America Memorial is located at the Ceremonial Entrance to Arlington National Cemetery and honors all women who have served in the United States Armed Forces. New York architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, husband and wife, designed the memorial. Planning for the memorial began as early as 1985, with the groundbreaking occurring 10 years later on June 22, 1995. The Memorial was dedicated on October 18, 1997, and officially opened to the public on October 20, 1997.
The Women's Memorial is located in the ceremonial entrance known as the Arlington Hemicycle. A number of public improvements and memorials were planned for construction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area for the bicentennial of the birth of George Washington, the first President of the United States and American Revolutionary War hero. Among these were Arlington Memorial Bridge and the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway (now known as the George Washington Memorial Parkway). To link the Virginia landing of the bridge with Arlington National Cemetery, a wide avenue known as Memorial Drive was constructed and a new entrance to the cemetery constructed to replace the old entrance, the McClellan Gate. Due to expansion of the cemetery toward the Potomac River, the McClellan Gate was now deep inside Arlington, and no longer functional as a ceremonial gateway.
A new ceremonial entry to Arlington, the Hemicycle, was constructed. Carved from the hillside that culminates in Arlington House, the Hemicycle is a Neoclassical semicircle 30 feet (9.1 m) high and 226 feet (69 m) in diameter. In the center is an apse 20 feet (6.1 m) across and 30 feet (9.1 m) high. In total, the Hemicycle covers 4.2 acres (1.7 ha). The Hemicycle was constructed of reinforced concrete, but faced with granite quarried at Mount Airy, Virginia. The walls range from 3 feet 6 inches (1.07 m) thick at the base to 2 feet 6 inches (0.76 m) at the top. The accent panels and coffers in the apse are inlaid with red granite from Texas. The Great Seal of the United States is carved in granite in the center of the apse arch, while on either side are seals of the United States Department of the Army (south) and the United States Department of the Navy (north). Along the facade of the Hemicycle were 10 false doors or niches—some up to 5 feet (1.5 m) deep, others just indentations in the wall—which were intended to house sculptures, memorial reliefs, and other artworks (which would act as memorials). The apse itself originally held a fountain, but the intention was to replace this with a major memorial in time.
Memorial Drive diverged north and south at the Hemicycle, passing through wrought iron gates into Arlington National Cemetery. The north gate is named the Schley Gate after Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, son of American Civil War Commanding General Winfield Scott and hero of the Battle of Santiago Bay during the Spanish-American War. The south gate is named the Roosevelt Gate for President Theodore Roosevelt. In the center of each gate, front and back, is a gold wreath 30 inches (76 cm) in diameter. Each wreath cradles the shield of one of the armed services that existed in 1932: The United States Marine Corps and United States Army on Roosevelt Gate, and the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard on Schley Gate. (The United States Air Force did not exist until 1947.) Each gate is divided into 13 sections by wrought iron fasces, and above six of the sections are iron spikes topped by gold stars. The granite pillars at either end of the Hemicycle and the pillars on eastern side of each gate are topped by decorative granite funeral urns. The freestanding granite pillar of each gate also is adorned with a gold-gilded lamp.
On top of the Hemicycle was a terrace 24 feet (7.3 m) wide. Originally, access to the terrace was granted only by going to the south end of the Hemicycle, through a pedestrian gate, and up some stairs. Above each arched entrance to the pedestrian stairs was a granite eagle. But this entrance was never opened, and instead remained locked for more than 50 years.
The Hemicycle was never completed. No parking was available near its entrance, so no automobiles could park nearby. Pedestrians were forced to walk across Arlington Memorial Bridge and down Memorial Drive to access the Hemicycle, or walk from a streetcar station some six blocks south of the entrance. The apse and niches were never filled with art. There rear of the Hemicycle was never developed, and remained a blank wall with a meadow in front of it.
By the 1980s, the Hemicycle was in serious disrepair. It had never been used for any ceremonial purpose, and Arlington officials largely ignored it.
In the early 1980s, women veterans began pressing for a memorial to women in the U.S. armed services. In 1988, the National Capital Memorial Commission, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the United States Commission of Fine Arts approved the use of the Hemicycle as a site for the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. It was the first time a memorial to the living—rather than the dead—on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. Marion Gail Weiss and Michael Manfredi won a national design competition for the memorial, and the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts voted unanimously for this design on April 6, 1995. The memorial was built in 1997.
Weiss and Manfredi's design created an artificial hill behind the Hemicycle, and buried the 33,000-square-foot (3,100 m2) women's memorial underground. The terrace behind the Hemicycle was incorporated into the memorial. As pedestrians walk along this rampart, they see 138 glass panels raised upward at an angle on the cemetery-facing side. Inscribed on these panels are quotations from some of the most famous women in U.S. Armed Forces history. (Many panels remain blank, to be inscribed in the future.) The raised panels also form a skylight which allows light to fall into the display room below, where the history of women in the armed forces is documented. At night, light from the display room shines upward through this skylight, helping to create an ethereal glow behind the Hemicycle. Also underground, further into the cemetery, are the gift shop, conference rooms, a theater, and the offices of the memorial.
Weiss and Manfredi utilized the 10 false niches along the Hemicycle's eastward-facing side to provide an entrance to the memorial. They pierced two of these on each side of the Hemicycle, and created stairs up to the terrace and to the interior of the memorial itself. To soften the severity of the plaza in front of the Hemicycle, a 200-nozzle fountain was placed in the apse. A reflecting pool was built in the center of the Hemicycle (which previously had just been a small circle of ill-kept, often dead grass). A short granite-enclosed spillway leads from the fountain to the reflecting pool, and a walkway was built around the reflecting pool to allow access to the entire Hemicycle and the entrances to the memorial.