Washington Monument

Washington, D.C.
The largest freestanding stone structure in the world is the obelisk built in honor of George Washington that stands about halfway between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. By legislation, it will remain the tallest structure in the U.S. capital The 91,000-ton (82,700-tonne) monument is 555 feet, 5 inches (166.7 meters) high and 55 feet, 5 inches (16.67 meters) square at the base. Its load-bearing granite walls are 15 feet (4.5 meters) thick at the bottom and 18 inches (45 centimeters) thick at the top, reflecting the 10:1 proportion of the overall dimensions. The granite structure is faced with white marble; because it came from different quarries first from Maryland and later Massachusetts there is a perceptible variation in color at about one-third of the height. Around the internal stair, 200 memorial stone plaques are set, presented by individuals, societies, cities, states, and foreign countries. At first, Washington acceded to the Congresss 1783 proposal to erect an equestrian statue of him in the planned federal capital. Faced with the problem of raising funds to build the city, he soon changed his mind. He died in 1799 and the following year, by agreement with his widow, Martha, Congress contemplated interring his remains in a marble pyramid beneath the dome of the Capitol Building, started six years earlier. Without money, the project was postponed until 1832, the centenary year of Washingtons birth. When his executors decided that his body should remain on his Mount Vernon property, the idea was abandoned. Possibly reacting to official indecision, a group of influential Washington citizens established the Washington National Monument Society in 1833; Chief Justice John Maxwell was its president. Publicizing its intention in the press and by direct appeal to churches, societies, and individuals, the society set about fund-raising. All U.S. citizens were invited to contribute $1, for which a certificate would be issued, but it was not until 1836 that enough money had been collected to finance a design competition for American architects. That resulted in a stylistic potpourri of ideas, including a (larger) variation on the pyramid theme and at least a couple of Gothic Revival proposals. Meanwhile, the fund was growing while the society waited for the government to fix a location, which it did in 1848. Robert Mills, said to be the first U.S.-born qualified architect, won the competition. He had been in government service for some years, designing among other public buildings the Patent Office and the Treasury in Washington, D.C. And about twenty years earlier he had produced a more modest Washington monument for Baltimore. His extravagant proposal for the national monument comprised a 500-foot (150-meter) obelisk, whose flattish pyramidal peak was adorned with a star; it rose from the center of a circular 110-foot-tall (33-meter) classical temple, between whose thirty-two Doric columns he proposed statues of Americas founding fathers. Above a central portico an enormous toga-draped figure of George Washington held the reins of a four-horse chariot. Construction began on Millss obelisk in the middle of 1848. On 4 July the 12-ton (11-tonne) cornerstone of Maryland marble was laid according to Freemasonic ritual by the District of Columbia Grand Lodge, launching a long association with the brotherhood of which George Washington had been a member. The society actively solicited contributions to the building fund from Masonic lodges throughout the nation, an appeal it repeated in 1853. It also asked other fraternities for money, but even including the sponsorship of the states the fund was almost depleted by 1854. Work slowed to a crawl. Worse came to worst. In 1854 the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party seized control of the societys records and elected its own members to office. The takeover was occasioned by Pope Pius IXs gift of a block of stone from the Temple of Concord in Rome that was stolen and destroyed by party members. Under the two-year Know-Nothing regime, the stream of private gifts, already reduced to a trickle, dried up completely. The obelisk rose just a few feet, poor work at that, before it stopped altogether. A more serious hiatus followed, caused by the Civil War; for more than 20 years, the Washington Monument stood unfinished at a height of about 156 feet (47 meters). In 1874, society secretary John Carrol Brent again pursued Masonic and other groups, this time with resounding, immediate success. Congress was less responsive, but the occasion of the American Centennial in 1876 raised national sentiment and funds were set aside. In August President Ulysses S. Grant authorized the government to complete the monument and to persuade the society to donate it to the American people. Public interest had waned by then, and Millss design was challenged. The temple was omitted, and there was strong criticism of the entire proposal. For example, American Architect and Building News described it as a monstrous obelisk, so cheap to design but so costly to execute, so poor in thought but so ostentatious in size