Washington Monument History
In 1783, after the Continental Congress voted to erect a statue in honor of George Washington in the yet-constructed permanent capital city of Washington, D.C., once the man himself became the first U.S. President, he vetoed the project due to federal debt caused by the young nation’s fight against British rule.
Who Built the Washington Monument?
Upon Washington’s death in 1799, however, a group known as the Washington National Monument Society raised private funds for the construction of a monument in Washington’s honor. Led by Chief Justice John Marshall, the society held a design competition, which ultimately named architect Robert Mills as the winner, based in part on his previous designs for the U.S. Treasury Building and the U.S. Patent Office.
Mills’ original design called for a temple-like structure that featured 30 stone columns and statues of the founding fathers and Revolutionary War heroes surrounding Washington astride a horse-drawn chariot and a 600-foot-tall Egyptian obelisk.
Construction began in 1854, until work was halted by lack of funds when the obelisk was just 150 feet tall.
Washington Monument History and Facts
That same year (1854), an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant group called the Know-Nothings took possession of the monument after Catholic Pope Pius the 9th donated a block of stone for the project from the ancient Roman Temple of Concord, which combined with the Civil War halted all progress on the monument until the 100th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
It was then, in 1876, that President Ulysses S. Grant authorized federal funding for the project, which saw the resumption of work in 1879. A change in architectural tastes by then saw the deletion of the temple-like base and Washington’s chariot statue, while the two-decade delay in construction made it impossible to match the color of the original quarried marble, resulting in a final monument with lighter colored stone at the bottom and darker stone at the top.
Construction of the 555-foot monument was completed in 1884, becoming the tallest man-made structure of its time, until the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889. Since its opening, the Washington Monument was threatened with destruction on December 8th, 1982, when anti-nuclear weapons protester Norman Mayer parked his van at the base of the monument, claiming to have 1,000 pounds of dynamite inside. Mayer’s fanatical hoax proved to be just that, however the 10-hour standoff resulted in the evacuation of nearby buildings, while temporarily trapping tourists inside the monument.
Earthquake at the Washington Monument
On August 23rd, 2011, the monument was badly rocked by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake centered near Mineral Virginia, causing cracks in the marble that spawned a $15 million repair project that wrapped up in 2014, making the Washington Monument an enduring symbol of the land of the free.