More about Washington Monument
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The Washington Monument in Washington D.C. is not the first structure to honor the OG commander-in-chief.
In fact, it wasn’t even the first obelisk Robert Mills constructed to honor George Washington. Yet, by the early 1800s American citizens felt the U.S. still didn’t have that finishing touch: the world's tallest building, a title we desperately desired, to be sure.
It’s not like this was anything new. Near unanimous support had been consistently given to the idea Washington deserved to be memorialized in some gaudy (and suspiciously girthy) fashion with one concept including a pyramid to house his corpse. It wasn’t until 1833 when a group of rich private citizens with a lot of money and time on their hands grouped together and formed the Washington National Monument Society. Their self-described purpose was to raise money, select a design for their new dream monument, and create the patriotic phallus Washington would have wanted.
However, Mills’ winning design envisioned a much crazier structure than what stands today. The selected design called for a pantheon with thirty columns containing statues of Declaration of Independence signers, a large chariot commanded by Washington above the entrance, and a six hundred foot Egyptian-style obelisk erected from the center. This concept was remarkably ambitious for the time, but outrageously expensive. Despite technological limitations, the funding of a fifth-grade art project, and what I can only imagine was an annoying amount of dick jokes, construction commenced on July 4th, 1848.
Six years and a one hundred and fifty feet later, money started depleting faster than you could say, “everyone in the universe saw this coming." Beyond finances, a more devastating series of events would halt the construction of the monument entirely. The society was overpowered by the growing influence of the Know-Nothing Party which drove away donors, Mills came down with an unfortunate case of death, and - oh yeah - the Civil War. It would take an additional sixteen years before work resumed on the monument.
In 1876, work began again but the design was reexamined. Realizing how insane (but characteristically American) the original plan was, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led by Lt. Col. Thomas Casey decided to remove the pantheon entirely, shorten the obelisk to a measly five hundred and fifty-five feet and widened the base. With Casey’s newfound focus on girth over length, the only remaining issue was the Baltimore-based quarry used to supply the stone for the first one hundred and fifty feet was no longer viable. In order to get enough materials to finish the monument, builders sourced stone from quarries in Tennessee and Massachusetts resulting in a striking difference of stone color about one-third of the way up the side of the Washington Monument.
After all the setbacks, funding issues, and wars which prevented construction, the tenacious project was dedicated in 1885. This included a fancy aluminum tip and a certification as the world’s tallest building (until the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889). In the decades following, the Washington Monument has experienced four separate restoration projects, one major earthquake, and is currently having a modern elevator installed, set for completion in 2019. It may not have been the first obelisk for Washington, but at this rate, it very well may be the last.
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Here is what Wikipedia says about Washington Monument
The Washington Monument is an obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States, victorious commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783 in the American Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Standing east of the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial, the monument is made of bluestone gneiss for the foundation and of granite for the construction. The outside facing consists, due to the interrupted building process, of three different kinds of white marble: in the lower third, marble from Baltimore County, Maryland, followed by a narrow zone of marble from Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and, in the upper part, the so-called Cockeysville Marble. Both "Maryland Marbles" came from the "lost” Irish Quarry Town of "New Texas". It is both the world's tallest predominantly stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk, standing
554 feet 7+11⁄32 inches (169.046 m) tall, according to U.S. National Geodetic Survey measurements in 2013–2014. It is the tallest monumental column in the world if all are measured above their pedestrian entrances. It was the world's tallest structure between 1884 and 1889, after which it was overtaken by the Eiffel Tower, in Paris. Previously, the tallest structures were Lincoln Cathedral (1311–1548; 525 ft/160 m) and Cologne Cathedral (1880–1884; 515 ft/157 m).
Construction of the presidential memorial began in 1848. The construction was suspended from 1854 to 1877 due to funding challenges, a struggle for control over the Washington National Monument Society, and the American Civil War. The stone structure was completed in 1884, and the internal ironwork, the knoll, and installation of memorial stones was completed in 1888. A difference in shading of the marble, visible about 150 feet (46 m) or 27% up, shows where construction was halted and later resumed with marble from a different source. The original design was by Robert Mills from South Carolina, but construction omitted his proposed colonnade for lack of funds, and construction proceeded instead with a bare obelisk. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1848; the first stone was laid atop the unfinished stump on August 7, 1880; the capstone was set on December 6, 1884; the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885; it opened on October 9, 1888.
The Washington Monument is a hollow Egyptian-style stone obelisk with a 500-foot-tall (152.4 m) column surmounted by a 55-foot-tall (16.8 m) pyramidion. Its walls are 15 feet (4.6 m) thick at its base and
1+1⁄2 feet (0.46 m) thick at their top. The marble pyramidion's walls are 7 inches (18 cm) thick, supported by six arches: two between opposite walls, which cross at the center of the pyramidion, and four smaller arches in the corners. The top of the pyramidion is a large, marble capstone with a small aluminum pyramid at its apex, with inscriptions on all four sides. The bottom 150 feet (45.7 m) of the walls, built during the first phase from 1848 to 1854, are composed of a pile of bluestone gneiss rubble stones (not finished stones) held together by a large amount of mortar with a facade of semi-finished marble stones about
1+1⁄4 feet (0.4 m) thick. The upper 350 feet (106.7 m) of the walls, built in the second phase, 1880–1884, are of finished marble surface stones, half of which project into the walls, partly backed by finished granite stones.
The interior is occupied by iron stairs that spiral up the walls, with an elevator in the center, each supported by four iron columns, which do not support the stone structure. The stairs are in fifty sections, most on the north and south walls, with many long landings stretching between them along the east and west walls. These landings allowed many inscribed memorial stones of various materials and sizes to be easily viewed while the stairs were accessible (until 1976), plus one memorial stone between stairs that is difficult to view. The pyramidion has eight observation windows, two per side, and eight red aircraft warning lights, two per side. Two aluminum lightning rods, connected by the elevator support columns to groundwater, protect the monument. The monument's present foundation is 37 feet (11.3 m) thick, consisting of half of its original bluestone gneiss rubble encased in concrete. At the northeast corner of the foundation, 21 feet (6.4 m) below ground, is the marble cornerstone, including a zinc case filled with memorabilia. Fifty American flags fly on a large circle of poles centered on the monument. In 2001, a temporary screening facility was added to the entrance to prevent a terrorist attack. A Virginia-centered earthquake in 2011 slightly damaged the monument, and it was closed until 2014. The monument was closed for elevator repairs, security upgrades, and mitigation of soil contamination in August 2016 before reopening again fully in September 2019.
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