Qualla: Washington Monument

Washington Monument: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kvanwagn, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand at the base of the obelisk and look up, and you can see the seam. About a third of the way up, the marble shifts color - lighter below, darker above - because the Washington Monument was built in two phases separated by almost a quarter century. Construction began in 1848 with white Cockeysville marble from the Texas Quarry in Maryland. Then the money ran out, the Civil War intervened, and the unfinished stump sat at 152 feet for nearly twenty years. When work resumed in 1879, the original quarry vein had shifted, and even the same source produced stone of a noticeably different shade. The monument carries the pause in its skin.

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Image: Kvanwagn | CC BY-SA 4.0

Washington Monument: An Obelisk for a Republic

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George F. Cram, Public domain. The design - a tapering shaft topped by a small pyramid - is the oldest monumental form on Earth, borrowed from ancient Egypt to honor the first president of a new republic. Architect Robert Mills drew up something more elaborate, ringed by columns and statuary. None of that ever...

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Image: George F. Cram | Public domain

Washington Monument: Memorial Stones

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Climb the stairs - all 897 risers - and you walk past one of the strangest archives in the country. Embedded in the interior walls are 193 memorial stones, contributed by states, cities, foreign governments, churches, fraternal orders, and Sunday schools. The Sabbath School child...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Washington Monument: Engineering the Pyramidion

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Park Service, Public domain. The cap of the monument - the pyramidion - is a feat of structural cleverness. Its marble panels are only seven inches thick, but they don't carry the weight above them. Instead, internal marble ribs transfer the load down to the shaft walls. Twelve courses of slabs, an inch over...

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Image: National Park Service | Public domain

Washington Monument: The View from 500 Feet

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rdsmith4, CC BY-SA 2.5. The observation level sits at 499 feet above the entry lobby, behind small windows on each of the four cardinal sides. North looks up Sixteenth Street toward the White House and Lafayette Square. East stretches down the Mall to the Capitol dome. South looks across the Tidal Basin...

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Image: Rdsmith4 | CC BY-SA 2.5

Washington Monument: Closures and Returns

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greyfiveys, CC BY-SA 4.0. The monument has been closed for years at a stretch. The 2011 earthquake shuttered it from August of that year until May 2014. A faulty elevator and seismic monitor closed it again from 2016 to 2019. After September 11, 2001, a temporary security building - an unlovely wooden cub...

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Image: Greyfiveys | CC BY-SA 4.0