How tall is the Washington Monument?

A monument to Washington was first proposed in 1783, when the Continental Congress appropriated funds to erect a statue of the country's military commander on horseback. The site eventually chosen for the statue-the exact surveyed centre of the original District of Columbia, on direct axes with the White House (to the north) and the United States Capitol (to the west)-was intentionally reserved for such a grand monument by Pierre-Charles L'Enfant when he designed the city in 1791. In 1804 President Thomas Jefferson drove a stone marker into the proposed site, though it later sank into the marsh. Owing to bureaucratic inertia and problems related to establishing a new government, the project was soon abandoned.

Celebrations of the centenary of Washington's birth rekindled interest in a monument. In 1833 the Washington National Monument Society, chartered to select a design for an appropriate memorial to the first president, chose a plan by Robert Mills for a 600-foot tall obelisk with a circular base complete with 30 Doric columns. The sheer weight of the proposed monument required moving the site from the location specified in L'Enfant's design to a point 350 feet to the northeast, thereby slightly disrupting the axial relationship to the other buildings. It was hoped that Washington's remains would eventually be reinterred at the memorial from their burial location at Mount Vernon.

Construction did not begin until 1848, and the cornerstone was laid during ceremonies on July 4th. In attendance were George Washington Parke Custis, Washington's step-grandson, as well as President James K. Polk and Congressman Abraham Lincoln. Financial and political difficulties plagued the project from the start, leading to major architectural modifications, including the abandonment of the structure's grandiose base. Memorial stones for the interior were contributed by various states and numerous fraternal organizations. Pope Pius IX donated a stone from the Temple of Concord in Rome (though in 1854 members of the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing party broke into the obelisk, stole the marker, and disposed of it in the Potomac River).

Construction was halted at the outbreak of the Civil War with the obelisk standing at only 152 feet. Mark Twain, who viewed the unfinished structure after the war, wrote, "[The Washington Monument] has the aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off. You can see cow-sheds about its base, and the contented sheep nibbling pebbles in the desert solitudes that surround it, and the tired pigs dozing in the holy calm of its protecting shadow."

After some preliminary discussion about tearing down the unfinished structure or changing its design, the Army Corps of Engineers assumed responsibility for its completion. Because it was impossible to find marble matching that used to construct the earlier portions, the colour of the upper two-thirds of the monument is visibly different from that of the lower third.

Finally, some 36 years after construction began, the 3,300-pound capstone was set on the structure (December 6, 1884), and the Washington Monument was officially dedicated by President Chester Arthur during ceremonies on February 21, 1885. However, the monument was not opened to the public until the installation of a steam elevator in 1888. The elevator was considered too dangerous for women, who were forced to walk up the monument's 897 steps!

By law, no other building in D.C. is allowed to be taller.