The National D-day Museum has settled on scaled-back plans to open in New Orleans, LA, by June 6, 1999, the 55th anniversary of the historic event. The museum will pay particular attention to the important role played in the Normandy, France landing by craft manufactured in New Orleans by shipbuilder Andrew Higgins. Other historic amphibious invasions of World War II will also be remembered.

Planners said they want to make extensive use of taped, written and possibly video accounts from those who took part in the invasions. "In the end, this is a story about people," said the flack for MetaForm Inc., a New York City firm designing the museum, which will be located in an abandoned brewery on Magazine Street. "We want to bring a personal sense of experience."

Exhibits would be displayed on the second and third floors of the building. The first floor would have a theater, a gift shop and possibly some sort of food service. The first part of the museum would cover the Allied landings in Normandy, Sicily and mainland Italy, while the second would be devoted to battles of the Pacific theater, like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In all those invasions, men were taken ashore in boats made at the Higgins yard.

Over the past four years, the project has been scaled down considerably from the original vision of University of New Orleans history professor Stephen Ambrose, author of a book on D-day. Ambrose wanted the museum to be at Lake Pontchartrain, where the Higgins boat underwent its first sea trial. Ambrose's plan also called for an endowment of as much as $10 million to cover operating costs. Both ideas have been dropped.

[05/10/1997]