The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is two walls of polished black granite set into the earth of Constitution Gardens, inscribed with the names of the 58,320 Americans killed or missing in the Vietnam War. Maya Lin's design does something unusual for a war memorial: it makes no declaration about the war's justice or meaning. It simply presents the names, in chronological order of death, and lets visitors draw their own conclusions.
The effect is profound. People find the names of relatives and friends, make rubbings of the inscriptions, leave letters and mementos at the base of the wall. Your own reflection appears in the polished stone alongside the names — an effect that seems accidental but is entirely deliberate. The memorial is open 24 hours and is particularly powerful after dark, when the lit names seem to float in the darkness.