The Washington Monument’s Colorful History

The Washington Monument, honoring the greatest American ever, is reopening to tourists this week after being shut down for three years due to an earthquake that hit Washington in 2011 and made the monument unsafe.

That monument, by the way, has a colorful history. Government officials had discussed a monument to George Washington after his death in 1799, but nothing was done until the Washington National Monument Society formed in 1833 and chose architect Robert Mills to design what would become an Egyptian-like obelisk that would eventually be 555 feet high.

Emphasis on “eventually.” Thinking donations to the monument would pour in, monument society members limited individual contributions to one dollar and refused federal financial assistance. As a result, by 1848 they had raised only $87,000, which allowed construction to begin, but by 1854 funds had run out and construction was halted.

Thus by 1861, when the Civil War began, the Washington Monument was a mere stump — just 152 feet high — sitting in the middle of a cow pasture located west of what is now the National Mall.

A cow pasture full of cows. In May of 1861 the War Department wrote the National Monument Society to say the monument’s grounds were being requisitioned as a grazing area for government-owned cattle, and that much of the area would be fenced in. Visitors could still visit the unfinished monument, but given the swampy ground, the sewage-infested canal that ran from the monument to the Capitol, and the plentiful cow pies, few did.

But at least the 152-foot stump no longer had to serve as a ragtag Union fort. Washington sits between Virginia, which in April of 1861 had seceded from the Union, and Maryland, which then had a strong pro-Confederacy presence. Maryland secessionists had even burned bridges connecting Maryland to Washington to prevent pro-Union forces from coming to Washington’s aid from the north. So desperate was the city’s plight — only a few hundred Union soldiers were in the capital — that the Lincoln administration feared an invasion by Confederate forces. As a result, in late April of 1861 plans to defend the capital in any way possible included fighting — Alamo-like — from behind the walls of the shell that was the Washington Monument.   Fortunately, that Confederate invasion never came.

Still, after the Civil War the monument remained unfinished until, in honor of America’s centennial in 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant authorized funding to complete the monument, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished the job. Once completed it was the tallest structure in the world, and today remains the tallest structure in Washington.

So visit any time. The monument is now safe, sound and back in business — and the cows are long gone.