Monument Interruptus
For decades the Washington Monument sat incomplete
During my visit to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum in Washington DC, I came across a picture that surprised me in an exhibit about conditions in the city during the Civil War. Taken sometime between 1862 and 1865, the photo shows officers from the U.S. Treasury Battalion in front of a partially completed Washington Monument.
I’d already been on the hunt that day for the first Lincoln memorial in DC, and seeing this picture made me think there was probably a rich history behind the efforts to memorialize George Washington as well since this photo was taken over sixty years following his death.
I turned to my first source, Wikipedia, which had a ton of information, and then I found a more compact summary by the National Park Service. My TL;DR, the monument was initially backed by a private organization called the Washington National Monument Society (WNMS), and the first phase of construction took place 1848-1854. When members of the Know Nothing party took control of the leadership of WNMS, other funders backed out and the operation went bankrupt. Wikipedia describes a period of a few years where two versions of the WNMS existed side by side, one that was controlled by the Know Nothings and the other by the people who rejected the Know Nothings’ leadership. Eventually, the Know Nothings gave up their hold.
No progress was made on the monument during the Civil War because the country’s attention and finances were focused on the conflict. It does seem symbolic that while the United States was reckoning with it’s foundational principle of liberty the Washington Monument sat incomplete.
In 1876, monument construction resumed as a public endeavor, and the monument was dedicated in 1885.
The final monument was quite different from what architect Robert Mills initially envisioned. He died in 1855 and thus never saw the obelisk fully constructed let alone his original plan which called for the obelisk to rise out of a grand building:
I love the mashup of the Greek and Egyptian influences in this original design. The equestrian statue on top of the colonnade reminds me of a similar figure that topped the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the monument that gave mausoleums their name (that memorial was dedicated to King Mausolus).
Do you prefer Mill’s original design to the obelisk that stands in Washington today?
Another Washington Monument
After spending a few days in DC, we traveled to Baltimore. Driving to dinner one night, we passed Baltimore’s Washington Monument on Mt. Vernon Place, which I’d taken some beautiful sunrise photos of from a hotel room a few years earlier. Seeing the monument again on our ride, I was struck by how similar it looked to Mill’s original plan for DC’s Washington Monument (a large column protruding from a building). Sure enough, Mills designed the Baltimore one before he received the DC commission.
I like the original design much better!