Majestic Monuments

Some of the nation’s most important leaders have been memorialized in remarkable and beautiful stone structures. Take a look.

The Washington Monument

It sat unfinished for more than 20 years. After reaching just 156 feet (less than one-third of its total height), the Washington Monument was abandoned, the project bankrupt as the country entered the Civil War (1861–1865).

As early as 1783, Congress wanted to erect a monument to the country’s first president, George Washington, but construction of the more-than-500-foot-tall obelisk didn’t begin until 1848. Built primarily of bluestone and gneiss, the monument also contains 194 memorial stones provided by states and organizations for use inside the monument. These special stones were carved with the names of the donors and other inscriptions.

Work resumed on the monument in 1878, but the upper portion of the Washington Monument remains a slightly different color from the first 150 feet because its stone came from a different layer at the quarry. Completed in 1884, the monument reached a final height of 555 feet and 5 1/8 inches and was topped with an aluminum capstone. At that time, aluminum was a new and expensive metal.

Visible today from all over the city, it was the first presidential monument to occupy Washington, D.C.’s National Mall. It remains a fitting tribute to America’s first president.

The Lincoln Memorial

Almost immediately after his assassination in 1865, plans were made to erect a monument to honor President Abraham Lincoln. Architect Henry Bacon’s design for the Lincoln Memorial is modeled after a Greek temple, to capture the democratic principles Lincoln had stood for in life. Built of white marble, it is surrounded by 36 columns (one for each state in the Union at the time of Lincoln’s death). A white marble staircase leads up to the memorial’s entrance. Inside, Daniel Chester French’s 19-foot-tall statue of Lincoln is seated in a chair. The enormous sculpture was made in 28 separate pieces. Both Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address are carved into the walls of the memorial.

Dedicated on May 30, 1922, the Lincoln Memorial has become one of the most famous gathering places on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall. Singer Marian Anderson, when denied permission to sing at Constitution Hall because she was black, performed an open-air concert there on Easter Sunday in 1939. Civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech there in 1963. Today the Lincoln Memorial is not just a place that honors one of America’s greatest presidents. It also is a stage where the ideals of equality, democracy, and free speech are celebrated.

Mount Rushmore

With 11-foot eyes and 20-foot noses, the 60-foot-tall faces on Mount Rushmore are truly enormous. If the heads were attached to bodies, they would be 465 feet tall! The gigantic faces of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln were designed by artist Gutzon Borglum. Workers hung by harnesses from the mountain as they used dynamite and jackhammers to blast and carve the faces into the granite rock of South Dakota’s Black Hills. It required nearly 400 men and 14 years to complete. When Borglum died in 1941, his son, James Lincoln Borglum, finished the job. Today Mount Rushmore National Memorial is one of the most familiar monuments in America and a popular destination for nearly three million visitors every year.

The Jefferson Memorial

With the enthusiastic support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a monument commemorating the spirit of Thomas Jefferson was constructed in Washington, D.C. Roosevelt believed our third president a worthy subject for his role as a Founding Father, the writer of the Declaration of Independence, and general supporter of individual rights and freedoms. So in 1934, Congress passed a resolution to construct the Jefferson Memorial.

Located on the National Mall beside the Tidal Basin of the Potomac River, the memorial created plenty of controversy. Protestors spoke out against cutting down cherry trees to make room for the structure. The trees had been a gift from the people of Tokyo, Japan, in 1912. Others complained that the design for the monument itself should have been chosen in a national competition—true to Jefferson’s ideals of democracy—instead of being assigned to architect John Russell Pope.

The final design is an open circular colonnade of marble pillars around a central 19-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a standing Jefferson. The monument’s design is similar to Jefferson’s own home, Monticello, in Virginia, and is based on the ancient Roman Pantheon. The interior of the monument includes passages from some of Jefferson’s most famous writings.

Crazy Horse

The presidents gazing out from Mount Rushmore are not the only big faces in South Dakota. Designed by Korczak Ziolkowski, the figure of Crazy Horse is being carved on Thunderhead Mountain eight miles away. The memorial was begun in 1948 and is intended to represent a great native hero. When finished, the figure of Crazy Horse on his horse pointing into the distance will be 563 feet tall and 641 feet long. For now, his 87-foot-tall face is the only completed portion of the monument. But work continues, and when it is finished, it will be the world’s largest statue and a monument to our nation’s rich Native American history.