Ever find yourself hopelessly stuck in traffic on the approach to the inbound 14th Street bridge, wondering about the history of the Washington Monument that towers, unreachable, just ahead?
Naw, didn’t think so.
Yet when your blood pressure returns to normal, you could do yourself a favor by examining John Steele Gordon’s Washington’s Monument, everything you need to know – and some things you thought you’d never need to know – about one of the capital’s most iconic landmarks.
Talk about a work in progress. A memorial to the father of our country was first proposed in 1783; the mighty obelisk that it became was not dedicated until 1885. Since its opening, it has endured lightning strikes, air pollution, closeness to Reagan National Airport and the 2011 earthquake. There’s a story here, and even though historian Gordon’s work is a short book on a tall subject, he has told it in rewarding detail. This thorough account includes numerous archival photographs, though none of the monument sheathed in the scaffolding that was recently removed.
Obelisks were the gifts of the pharaohs, often built in pairs at the entrances to temples. It is almost unimaginable to consider the amount of labor needed for their construction, or for that matter, many centuries later, their removal from Egypt as trophies for European conquerors, beginning with the Romans. In addition to Rome, obelisks stand in London, Paris, Istanbul and New York’s Central Park, as well as one English country estate.
But the Washington Monument, while owing its heritage to the ancient Egyptians, is a product of American ingenuity – and dithering.
As Gordon notes, it was not until the centennial of Washington’s birth, in 1832, that the country got serious about building his memorial. Chief Justice John Marshall was the first president of the Washington National Monument Society, which was given the impossible task of raising money from private sources, with individuals limited to contributing no more than a dollar per year.
This didn’t go over so well, although it at least got the ball rolling on a design by architect Robert Mills, which, frankly, would have been monumentally hideous. We should be forever grateful that Mills’s proposal, a towering stalk that included a colonnaded pantheon at its base, never came to pass.
Yet over the next half-century, in fits and starts, the graceful monument we see today slowly but surely assumed its place as Washington’s beacon to the world.
Gordon largely avoids getting trapped in discussions about Washington’s present gridlock, yet it is obvious from his narrative that gridlock has been a part of Washington’s political landscape almost as long as we have been a republic.
In the monument’s case, gridlock served us well. For one, it much improved the design. Rather than the cupcake with a very large candle (or smokestack) that Mills envisioned, the passage of time, the escalating costs and better technology produced a monument for the ages. “So the Washington Monument is proof that some times just muddling through produces superior results,” the author writes.
Keep this in mind the next time you get stuck trying to cross the bridge.