RSS FeedWayback III: Washington Monument Back In The Day
It’s hard to believe that this is what the Washington Monument looked like for over 20 years but around 1856 construction on the Monument effectively stopped and didn’t resume until 1879; this photo was taken in 1860. The cornerstone was laid in 1848 and the capstone in 1884. Why did construction stop? The simple answer is that the money ran out. The more complicated answer is that the Know Nothing party took control of the project from the Washington National Monument Society (WNMS) and couldn’t keep the project going. When they turned control back to the WNMS, the Civil War started and that delayed construction. Congress didn’t appropriate more money for construction until 1876. After removing the colonnade from the design construction resumed in 1879, some three years later.
Robert Mills, who designed the Treasury Department building and the Penn Quarter’s very own U.S. Patent Office building (now the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum), is the architect of the Washington Monument.
Photo Credit: Shorpy, The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog
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Comments
Shorpy’s got some excellent photos of old DC, including some great shots of the Waffle Shop and the commercial corridors on H and 8th.
it’s much more fun to tell visitors that the difference in the color of the marble is the high water mark of the “Great Potomac Flood of ____ (Insert suitable fake date)”. Never fails to impress…
My father always told everyone that the color change was the high water mark from the Johnstown flood. Everyone always believed it. It was always great fun to hear those he told tell others.
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If you look at the monument you can see a slight color variation from the batch of stone used for the bottom part and what was used after building was resumed. This is one of those facts that I tell guests / visitors and some are intrigued and some think I am making it up. I will have to refer the non believers to PQ living next time!