The Self-Made Monument: George Washington and the Fight to Erect a National Memorial
Author(s): Kirk Savage
Source: Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 225-242
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Henry Francis du Pont
Winterthur Museum, Inc.
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The Self-made Monument
George Washington and the Fight to Erect
a National Memorial
Kirk Savage
HE 555-FOOT OBELISK on the Mall in
Even in his own time Washington and the nation
Washington, D.C., is one of the most conhe led were largely products of the collective imagination. America was then-and to some extent
spicuous structures in the world, standing
alone on a grassy plain at the very core of national
remains-an intangible thing, an idea: a voluntary
power-approximately the intersection of the two
compact of individuals rather than a family, tribe,
great axes defined by the White House and the
or race. When Washington took command of the
Capitol. The structure itself lives up to its unrevolutionary army, he gave the new nation a landrivaled site: it dominates the city around it not mark,
just a visible center to which scattered settle-
ments of people divided by cultural background
by sheer height but also by its powerful soaring
contours and stark marble face (fig. 1). This
and economic interest could pledge their alle"mighty sign," as one orator called it a century ago,
giance. Necessity made Washington an instant
icon, and from the beginning necessity buried the
is the nation's monument to George Washington,
real figure beneath a mound of verse, oratory, and
"the Father of His Country"-a historical figure
almost as impenetrable as the blank shaft that comimagery, all vying to give shape to the icon and
memorates him.'
therefore to the nation.2
What can be made of the Washington Monu- It is useful to think of Washington as a historment? The answer depends on the interpretation
ical invention; history made him perhaps more
of Washington himself. For both the man and his
than he made history. This essay attempts to interpret probably the most conspicuous, and certainly
monument were once the symbolic battlegrounds
for long-standing disputes over national identity.
the most problematic, undertaking in that historical campaign: the effort to build him a national
Kirk Savage is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the
History of Art, University of California, Berkeley.
The author thanks Svetlana Alpers, Margaretta Lovell,
Elizabeth Thomas, and Dell Upton for reading and comment-
ing on earlier versions of this essay.
The interpretive literature on the Washington Monument
is scanty. Two sketchy accounts are found in Frederick
Gutheim, "Who Designed the Washington Monument?" AIA
Journal 15, no. 3 (March 1951): 136-41; and Ada Louise Hux-
monument. The undertaking began in the eigh-
teenth century (when Washington was still alive),
ran into partisan warfare after his death, and
floundered for decades in unending disputes over
designs and intentions. The controversy is all the
more striking if one looks at the achievements of
local campaigns during the same period. States
table, "The Washington Monument, 1836-84," Progressive Ar- and cities had no trouble displaying their patriochitecture 38, no. 8 (August 1957): 141-44. A discussion of some tism in a series of impressive monuments to Washof the alternative designs is in Robert Belmont Freeman, Jr.,
ington, including a statue by Antonio Canova in
"Design Proposals for the Washington National Monument,"
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vols. 73-74 (Washing-
ton, D.C., 1973-74), pp. 151-86. For a recent and stimulating
interpretation of the monument in the context of the Mall, see
Charles L. Griswold, "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the
Raleigh, North Carolina (1821), a 220-foot column
in Baltimore, Maryland (1829), and a colossal
Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconog2 On Washington as icon, see, among others, Marcus Cunraphy," Critical Inquiry 12, no. 4 (Summer 1986): 693-96. None liffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (New York: Mentor
of these, however, attempts to place the monument in the con- Books, 1982); William Alfred Bryan, George Washington in
text of the historical campaign to commemorate Washington American Literature, 1775-1865 (New York: Columbia Univerand the controversy that campaign generated.
sity Press, 1952); and Wendy C. Wick, George Washington, an
? 1987 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum,
Inc. All rights reserved. oo84-0416/87/2204-0001 $03.00
American Icon: The Eighteenth-Century Graphic Portraits (Char-
lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1982).
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226
Winterthur
Portfolio
trying to sort out the design process, has argued
that the monument as finally built "reflects the imprint, over many years, of so many forces that in
the end we are less aware of individual genius than
of that cumulative genius we call culture." Or as
Americans claimed when the obelisk was finished
in the 188os, it was a work of "the people," a monu-
ment that seemed to make itself and to make
America.3
Indeed, the obelisk seems to serve as the perfect expression of union-a great mass coalesced
into a single gesture that belies all dissension. But
this way of reading the monument speaks more of
longing than of reality. The blank shaft was in no
way built by consensus. It was instead the achievement of an engineer working in virtual secrecy,
outside the political process and against the protests of the artistic community. In fact, Washington's monument could be finished only by obliterating his traces in the process, not only from the
plo
~
/VS
...
...
structure itself but also from the discussion sur-
rounding it. The more we examine the "resolu-
il4~ :;ii
tion" his monument represents, the more unsettling it looks and the more unsettled the critica
reactions to it appear. The engineered unity of this
soaring obelisk gave the nation an image of its own
destiny, an image at once powerfully appealing
and yet in many ways troubling to this day.
With an almost unerring instinct, Washington
played a role fraught with paradox. He was the
leader of a nation that had in theory renounced
the notion of a leader. The republican theory of
Fig. 1. Washington Monument, Washingt
government,
following Enlightenment ideals, held
1848-85. (Photo, Kirk
Savage.)
that men could govern themselves; to the extent
that formal government was necessary at all, it was
equestrian statue to
in
Richmond,
Virgi
be conducted
by representation rather
than preBut the national enterprise
forced
rogative. Even the federalists,
who had less an
conficould not be swept away
by simple
appeal
dence in republican
man than in strong,
central
otism. If Washington
thethe
foundin
authority, was
could not disavow
ideology of selfwhat kind of nation
did Washington's
he found?
government.
genius lay inErect
his adaptional monument tation
to to
Washington
this difficulty: he became theultim
reluctant
manded a symbolic leader.
construction
oftoAme
He preferred Mount Vernon
power, or
The trouble originated,
Washin
so he said; and theafter
more he demurred
or prodeath, in a profound
ideological
disput
tested, the
more power he got.4
nature of the republic.
As
new
disputes
Washington
in myth
embodied
the very ideal of
the campaign to unify
around
Washingt
self-regulation
on which the
republican experiory continued to betray significant fissu
American self-image.
Not even the Civil
3 Gutheim, "Who Designed the Monument," p. 136.
end the discord; it took
another
twenty
4 For biographical
details, see Cunliffe,
George Washington;
my interpretation
owes much to his. The scholarly
debate on
bring the memorial
to completion.
Comm
at
the
time,
and
the nature of Americansince
republicanism isthen,
still alive and has
rehistorians
ha
vealed significant variants in the ideology; my interest is in how
to interpret this messy
history
plura
Washington himself,
by virtue of his as
unique a
position,
magnified
toward ultimate consensus. Frederick Gutheim,
those tensions inherent in republicanism.
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Washington
Monument
227
ment rested; by governing the temp
power he became preeminently qual
cise it. Washington's own model of
probably the "patriot-king" of Englis
ory, yet the one model that consist
........ N5 . 1?i/
to his contemporaries came from th
republican
Rome.
It
was
the
ii i; : : - figur
tus-the farmer who dropped his plo
defense of Rome, only to relinqui
soon as the danger had passed. Sig
leadership
-_-- !!! ! iil ! !i!
example
legitimized
gency.
Americans
clung
!!~---i~; i_~: : iII i
only
to
the
in
id
ington, like Cincinnatus, could not b
take power unless he was assured th
of the country
would leave the
they
If
were
i i i :;;ii:: l~ ; : .. ' ii:iiii
depended i i !'iiiii!;i;!;
on
him
people to govern
supposed
Washington
to
!!!!
could
in
a
republic
!!!ii! solve
not
th
tions inherent in republican leaders
perhaps a more important
role as
Fig.
2.
Edme
publican citizenship.
To Paris,
remain a17
na
XV,
republic, a form of
government
inco
a
la
gloire
de
o
the whole idea of (University
icons, Washington
the archetypal republican. Thus the
Adams
real
biography of Washington
of his
era,
representat
ten by Parson Weems,
was essential
he
uniq
the private virtues
on was
which a
selfincompatib
public depends: piety,
temperance,
double
mean
tice. Yet even in the
role of moral
e
or
was
heIn
an
ington could not avoid
paradox.
t
heart
of
the
broadcast Washington's
virtues-an
ment,
and
t
their own republic's
virtues-Amer
"the
people
into a self-defeating
rhetoric.
By m
The
first
p
ton's virtues so extraordinary
that
ton
avoided
ancient and modern
prototypes,
rh
reverted
to
ened to transform
him into a demig
of
the
aspiration of any close
ordinary
individu
tinental
Co
warned in 1785: "Instead
of adori
statue,
"the
ton, mankind should
applaud
the
educated him. . . dress,
. I glory holdin
in the
was I precisel
Washington, because
know him
XV,
follow
exemplification of
the American
c
Marcus
Aur
ton
was
ser
5
On
Washington
and
theL'
pa
Charles
Presidents
above
Party:
The
Fi
(Chapel
Hill:
equestrian
University
of
89-91.
The
Cincinnatus
myth
pivotal
poin
cinnatus,
George
Washington
map
converg
Power
in
Early
America
(Gar
his
admiration
for
the
Cinci
ine
how
the
ideal
reveals
stra
republican
leadership.
quoted
in
Brya
views The
toward
6
Mason
L.
Weems,
Life
federalists,
liffe
(Cambridge,
Mass.: wh
Ha
Press,
inflated
rhetoric that Adams abhorred.
1962);
Adams
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to
Jo
228
Winterthur
Portfolio
these
eral
.LEK flF
1
06L
D
read
70
Devices,
only
a
Washington,'
it.
Citizens
b
a
imitat
for a "laconic" monument reflects a wider trend in
taste toward neoclassical simplicity, a trend linked
to a new veneration of republican Rome; the republican hero need not have his exploits trum-
:log : O
tii-
:Q ?00 0 F-Ot n
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peted. Jay's proposal would also change the imperial model by presenting the leader explicitly for
imitation, not reverence. The suggestion was less a
solution than an uneasy compromise between re-
publican ideas and monarchical imagery. The
I0t2JtI~IO~O
statue was never erected. The record of debate
does not survive, but one can assume that there
':?\'JEDOEII 110 EME
5DOLIDnLJO
were more profound objections than mere cost
C-D c7Z3 ?i I, -m cr
= 0 UI3 0UOD
Even in painted portraits of Washington, images o
equestrian command did not prove popular.8
Washington's death, on December 14, 1799,
opened the way for a much more open confronta
tion with the issues that had quietly troubled the
equestrian proposal. Between 1791 and 1799 the
ideological differences between the federalists an
Fig. 3. Pierre Charles L'Enfant, plan of Was
the opposition
republicans
had grown
and had
1791 (detail). Facsimile,
United
States
Coast
=09 30 300
ARDOOF
detic
Survey
471/4".
00
DE:
the Lithograph;
groups into two distinct political
par
Office, polarized
1887.
H. 31
In the few days
after Washington's death
(Cartographic, ties.
National
Archives.)
however, the two parties set aside their differenc
and agreed stand
on a programat
of commemoration.
The
great commander would
the poin
unanimous resolution
of December radiat
24, 1799,
gin of the entire scheme,
authority
called
forthe
a publictwo
tomb tohouses
be erected inof
th
ward from his image
to
Capitol,
despite outlying
Washington's express instructions
power and thence to
the
plazas
for burial in Mount Vernon.9 But what kind of
senting individual states.7
tomb and how elaborate?
Here the
ideological ten
But this kind of imagery
was too
much
a
sionits
exploded
to the surface
in a display of
part
with the ideology of
day.
As early
as
W
politics that has
sinceopposition
then largely escaped notic
ton's first term in office
an
pa
The dispute
originated of
with amonarc
proposal, spon
growing that used the
charge
sored by the federalists,
to enlarge thetheir
monume
embarrass the federalists,
to question
from the indoor
envisaged
in the Decembe
to the republican cause.
Iftomb
the
oppositio
resolution to a huge
outdoor mausoleum in t
criticize official ceremony,
Washington's
form of a stepped pyramid of
too feet
high. The
d
coins, and public celebrations
his
bi
sign,
by Benjamin
Latrobe,
was even
more "l
would not L'Enfant's
plan
be all
the
more
conic" thanfederalist
Jay's earlier proposal;John
yet Jay intend
to attack? Even staunch
J
while Latrobe's pyramid
aime
compelled to soften understatement
the provocative
implic
for overstatement,
summoning
the ancient
the equestrian proposal.
In a
report
to aw
t
gress,
in
1785,
and
less
geometry of omitting
the pharaohs to inflat
he inspiring
suggested
Washington's
claims to everlasting
fame. Latrobe
reliefs of Washington's
battle
victories
en
idea wasequestrian.
clearly indebted to the "Would
designs of Frenc
for the pedestal of the
funerary architects,
especially Etienne-Louis
Bou
more laconic," Jay wrote
to Congress,
"equ
vous,
expensive,
to
put
in
the
s Donald H. Stewart, The Opposition Press of the Federali
Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1969), p
7Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-I 789, ed. Worth-
487-88,
ington Chauncey Ford, Gaillard Hunt, John C. Fitzpatrick,
and519-21; Journals of Congress, 29:86; Wills, Cincinnat
p. 82.
Roscoe R. Hill, 34 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1904-37) 24:492; J. P. Dougherty, "Baroque9 See,
andfor example, John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, I789Picturesque Motifs in L'Enfant's Design for the Federal
i8oi Capi(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), pp. 99-125; and
tal," American Quarterly 26, no. 1 (March 1974): 23-26.Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 1st sess., p. 208.
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Washington
Monument
229
proposal was to elevate
Washington far above the th
lke, who had already
suggested
common man, to establish
the utter remoteness of
pyramids for national
heroes.
Bo
too fantastic in his
scale
to
be could
buildab
achievement. Surely Washington
not be
considered an as
exampleconceptual
for the common man to
theless important
the psychology
of
the
"sublime
imitate
when, standing
below
the looming pyra-
cenotaph
is
beholder,
meant
to
and
mid, the latter
felt astonish
himself "sinking," crushed be-
who neath
must
the "sublimity"imagine
of Washington's unblem- hi
nothingness below
the
immensity
ished life. The
federalists'
own rhetoric betrayed a
the driving clouds
and
the
sharp
greater interest
in pacifying
the populace
than in
face against dark
reinforce
e
instructing
it; this is especially apparent the
in their
natural drama to
the
architectur
obsession
with the security
of the monument. For
trobe's rendering
ofwasa
them the pyramid
abovepyramid
all a stronghold that
although brought
to
mo
could not bedown
"broken and destroyed
by a a
lawless
exploits the same
pictorial
langua
mob or by a set of schoolboys." Although a republilight, its active can
sky,
and
its
himself, Latrobe
appealed toeven
his federalist paof trees (fig. 5).
trons by emphasizing repeatedly the threat of van-
dalism to ain
less durable
monument: "We know that
The republicans
Congress,
s
sign of "royal even
display"
or
extra
[Washington's] virtues are hated, by fools and
sharply to this rogues,
enlargement
in co
and unfortunately that sort of animals
federalists, however,
the
very
crawl much about in public buildings."'2
trobe's proposal
was
These sentiments
were essential
anathema to the repubinfinite importance
to
civil
licans in Congress,
zealous
defenders of societ
the selfsaid on the House
floor,
"that
governing
ordinary man. If the
monument "wereth
great man should
beNathaniel
perpetuated
made of glass,"
Macon claimed, "frail as
in our power." it What
stronger
m
is, it would be safe."
To the republicans, the
argued, than a large
federalists' desireand
for an everpowerfu
larger monument
that would "impress
a sublime
rested on suspect motives.
If the federalists were aw
hold it"? When genuinely
the interested
time
for
a vot
in promoting
Washington's
patron Robert Harper
gushed
tell
"example," why not dispense
with the monument
fully
impressed
by
the
subject;
altogether
and spend
the money
to educate the
that surrounds
it."weNo
poor? "Then, indeed," Macon added,
might w
mine are totally
inadequate."11
flatter ourselves
with having extended the empire
quate" words were
carefully
chos
of his virtues,
by making those understand
and
sublimity
imitate them patriot
who, uninstructed, couldshould
not comfeeling that a true
confronted with
the
immensity
prehend
them." In other
words, a failure in virtue
virtue. This wascould
the
feeling
only be a same
failure in education.
Pure repubwas intended to
inspire
the
licanism
led Macon and othersin
to question
the very sp
before it.
act of commemoration, for any monument-
What were the federalists really up to? They merely by singling out the hero from the great
claimed that a "sublime" monument would impress mass-undermined their basic assumption that
Washington's moral example more effectively than virtue and power resided in the ordinary individa modest tomb. Yet, without summoning overtly
ual. The republicans were caught in a dilemma:
monarchical imagery, the whole thrust of Latrobe's how to commemorate Washington without reproaching the people. Some of them searched for
answers, and by far the most extraordinary idea
10 The design is described in a letter from Latrobe to Congressman Henry Lee, April 24, 18oo, in John C. Van Horne came from John Nicholas of Virginia, who called
and Lee W. Formwalt, eds., The Correspondence and Miscellaneous for nothing more than "a plain tablet, on which
Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 162-63. On the basis of this and other
evidence, drawings formerly thought to be for the Richmond
12 Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 2d sess., p. 8o0; Latrobe to
theater monument are now conclusively identified as designs Robert Goodloe Harper, April 24, 18oo, as quoted in Van
for the Washington mausoleum. For Boull6e's pyramids, see Horne and Formwalt, Correspondence and Papers, 1:16o-6 1. LaRichard A. Etlin, The Architecture of Death: The Transformation of trobe's letter is such a masterpiece of federalist condescension,
the Cemetery in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT targeting French revolutionaries and the popular mobs they
Press, 1984), esp. pp. o09-15, 125-29.
inspired, that it is hard to believe that he was ever republican.
" Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 859, 802, 863. Clearly he knew how to please his patrons.
This content downloaded from 132.174.254.12 on Thu, 22 Sep 2016 13:46:16 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
230
Winterthur
Portfolio
~
~
*
"
:::I-:-::?i: :::
: :~
~'
-;;;;;;,
C
:i::::~~
~1
I~ - ~
~r---
i
~s
-Ba~-*
~-?I:-=
~=
-:::::~:~
~
~
:~~-$~-----~----:-?:
;
i::::~:i~~
~ ~-;?-c??~
Fig. 4. Etienne-Louis Boullee, Cenotaphe dans le genre 9gyptien, ca. 1785. Ink a
ard A. Etlin, The Architecture of Death: The Transformation of the Cemetery in Ei
MIT Press, 1984), pl. 85. (Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale.)
oil
i::,::,~n..... .........
Fig. 5. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, proposal for a Washington mausoleu
(Prints and Photographs, Library of Congress.)
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Washington
every
This,
Monument
231
man
and
[Washington's]
mo
could
write what his
1832,
answe
only,
[is]"our
the basis
of
continuity
thei
Nicholas's
tablet of
would
this
fame."13
by distance
1832 had
actua
was any legitimate
betwee
major
crisis
the
the common man.
Instead
of of
awing
Washington
nothing
Nicholas's
whole
threatened
here
becomes
more
to sp
one
w
than
what the peopl
Washington's
tomb
proposal
is
could
a brilliant
be
used to
problem
of
representing
over
the other. au
Th
public. In this monument
the le
move Washington'
legitimacy only by
dissolving
him
at Mount
Vernon
argued
that
it "w
embracing identity
of the
citizenr
the icon and the Union
people of
together
te
these sta
tue of their republic.
ter of the union a
The debate overcred
Washington's
tom
resting place
a contest between
two ideologies,
opponents,
led by b
ing visions of South,
republican
man.
followed
V
don:
"The way to
charged political
atmosphere
of
monument question
became
d
the virtues
of as
Was
Alien and Sedition
Laws
or the oth
but,
if possible,
to
that have traditionally
been consid
Washington's
spir
tests separatingnot
federalist
from
rest in the
hal
final proof is in with
the vote:
on Janu
his own
peop
roll call in the House
on the pyram
true monument
o
vided along party
lines-the
republ
marks
are among
to o against andington's
the federalists
comingv
tween
Northbeing
and
favor (the three
dissenters
on
the the
one hand
a
habitually voted
with
other
eralist victory was
a Pyrrhic
one,
slavery
and
on h
t
on the eve of Thomas
planter Jefferson
and leader
and the republicans'
assumption
of
sides
staked claim
The measure soon
died of
a quiet
deat
dium
imagery
as on
well
the v
houses could not seal
agree
a as
final
The discussion of Even
18oo- as
18o
1
estab
federal
damental
polarity
that continued
t
public
against mon
debate
for several
dec
groups
wholeheart
unsuccessful attempts
to revive
th
memorials
to Wa
gressional
tional
old
tomb
were
made.
Opponen
men
who
had ar
injunctions
against
"man-worsh
whole idea
of mon
ones
in their
hom
tation," the most
radical
among
same theoretical
argument
that
claimed,
"monum
citizenry-created
by education
an
tively
helped Nor
press-had made possible
monuments
obso
statue
of
sculptor in Europ
'
4
cost and scale did
6th Cong., 2d sess.,
ers. In 1816 a write
Annals
of
Congress,
Annals
of
Congress,
6th
Cong.,
2d
sess.,
p.
commenting
on
v
of the vote, the Latrobe
proposal had
bee
even grander pyramid
proposal designed
monument
in Bost
design of his which shows two pyramids h
ger was
better:
a c
the monograph by Dorothy
Stroud,
Georg
1741x-825 (London: Faber and Faber, 1971
may not be the final design
submitted
to C
15 Register
of Debate
not correspond to the
verbal
descriptions
fo
375,
1784.
Attempts
t
the debates. For the party
affiliations in
ofthe
th
1816, repeatedly
tives, see Manning J.
Dauer, of
The
Adams Fe
tennial
Washingto
Johns
Hopkins
University
during
Press,
1953),
P
the
war,
see Br
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232
Winterthur
trian
erect
statue
the
there
Portfolio
because
largest
would
be
and
"a
with
the
finest
in
hundred
[e
us."'6 Since the monument had
world stage, its proponents f
discuss the European traditions
to hold design competitions.
Baltimore carried the proce
fitting conclusion, completin
1829 after a design by Latro
Mills (fig. 6). In appealing for
of
in
the
project
republican
were
careful
rhetoric;
to
c
they
monument would act to revers
public virtue which is the on
foundation of a free governme
argued, on the strength of rhe
that the monument campaigns
resented attempts to shore up
were thought to be eroding in t
-:
of
easy
money
themselves,
and
however,
:::
::
:
quick
gain
testify
el
thesis. It is true that Baltimo
Washington in his grand mo
virtue, resigning his military c
is presented as such a historica
merits
elevation
220o
feet
off
the
fact that the pose is hardly dis
ment that ostensibly inculcates
regulation actually signals its
now celebrated precisely becau
by mortal men. The Baltimore
the same disease of "grasping
these monuments were allege
Baltimore
order
to
elevated
Fig. 6. Washingto
Robert Mill
Md.,
(Ph
elevate
its 1815-29.
own colum
est and finest" monument ever erected in the
Nevertheless, Harris's thesis cannot be dis-
country. 17
missed quite so easily. The coupling of a rhetorical
appeal to simple republican values with a grandi16 R. D. W. Connor, "Canova's Statue of Washington," Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, Bulletin
ose and extravagant monument reflects the double
No. 8 (191o), pp. 14-27; Macon quoted in Annals of Congress,
standards we have seen applied to federal and local
6th Cong., 2d sess., p. 803; "Monument to Washington," Northmonuments. Both inconsistencies are symptomatic
American Review 2, no. 6 (March 1816): 338.
of a profound moral ambiguity underlying repub17 Sponsors' fund-raising appeal published in Port Folio,
n.s., 3, no. 6 (June 1810): 465; Neil Harris, The Artist in Amerilicanism in
can Society: The Formative Years, 1790-i860 (New York: Simon
The nation
and Schuster, 1966), pp. 193-96. It is even suggested that a real
America through the Jacksonian era.
and its people were not content with
the simple values and modest ambitions imposed
in
estate scheme was the original motive for the monument
J. Jefferson Miller II, "The Designs for the Washington Monuby
ment in Baltimore," Journal of the Society of Architectural Histo-
orthodox republicanism; it was a restless society
constantly striving for more land, more wealth,
rians 23, no. 1 (March 1964): 19. Another motive is suggested
more power. Just as Americans had not let Washby Alexis de Tocqueville, who argues that in a democracy one
of the few acceptable outlets for self-assertion is the public
ington slumber in republican simplicity, but had
monument: "In democratic communities the imagination is
compressed when men consider themselves; it expands
indefinitely when they think of the state," or, we might add,
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Phillips Bradley, vol. 2
when they think of Washington (Alexis-Charles-Henri de
[New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 19451, p. 56).
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Washington
Monument
233
opportunity for a huge
ritual reaffirmation
of nacompeted to broadcast
and
elevat
tional faith, wherecompeted
the monument-like the naso they increasingly
fo
be builtthe
by the willing
toil of a people
and wondered tion-would
why
republi
reunited
around the
original values of the Revolu- ev
munal harmony
was
becoming
tion. to
But Custis
was a lone voice and, to WatterThe monuments
Washington
s
ston, an absurd one.his
It was unrealistic
to expect
cial tension because
ambigu
citizens to come a great distance
the purpose di
American aspirations
in "for
two
throwing a spadeful
of earth," and "as to the
backward to an ofideal
republic
of
all that remain
of them, ifof
they
mony; forward revolutionary
to astock,
new
era
could contrive
to get here
at all, would not be able
boundless wealth,
and
personal
Nowhere is the tension more evident than in
to elevate the mass five feet in twenty years."
Above all other objections, the worst feature of the
the biggest monument campaign of all, the one
n
gl
that finally resulted in the national monumentplan
to was that it would be ugly. "No; the monument
to
Washington that we have today. The Washington the great founder of our independence should
National Monument Society from its inception was
be something that would exhibit not only the gratiactually a local movement in the guise of a national
tude and veneration, but the taste and liberality of
one, springing to life in the same spirit of competithe People of this age of our republic."20
tion that animated the Baltimore project before it. Watterston's statement marks a turning point
in the discussion of the national monument, for
The society was founded in 1833 by a few permanent residents of the capital, all of whom wereuntil
in then the notion of taste had been considered
irrelevant. It is true that Macon in 18oo had adone way or the other active in promoting the unrealized city that was still a swampy backwater.
mitted that the pyramid "might indeed adorn this
They intended their monument to triumph over
city," but it is more significant that the aesthetic
any conceivable competition: when they invited consideration
dedid not even begin to answer his obsigns in 1836 they stipulated that the monument
jections to the enterprise.21 Not until after the Civil
cost no less than the astonishing sum of one million
War did Congress finally shift the focus of its dedollars, all to be provided by private contributions.
bate from the political meaning of the monument
George Watterston, the moving force behind the
to the artistic merit. From 1836 on, however, the
organization, stated in print exactly what he enmonument society staked its enterprise on its ex-
visaged: a stack of richly ornamented temples
travagant good taste. The monument would not
crowned by an obelisk reaching 500 feet in elevaonly underscore the old-fashioned virtues of
tion, in other words, "the highest edifice in Washington's
the
republic but, more important, also
world, and the most stupendous and magnificent
advance a new set of cultural pretensions whose
monument ever erected to man."19
ideological fit in that republic was uncertain at best.
Watterston made his suggestion to counter This
a
conflicting mixture of intentions received
proposal put forth by Washington's adopted son,
an especially apt expression in the design finally
George Washington Parke Custis, for a burial
chosen by the society in 1845, a proposal by Mills
mound to be built by citizens from all overthat
thebore a striking similarity to the architectural
country, led by elders of "revolutionary stock,"
fantasy already suggested by Watterston (figs. 7, 8).
who would gather at the capital to donate their
Mills distilled Watterston's stack of temples into a
labor. Custis saw the monument enterprise as
an
single,
circular, Doric colonnade loo feet high,
surmounted by a boo-foot decorated obelisk; the
s8 My view of the period is indebted to Marvin Meyers, The
Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1957), esp. pp. 9-10, 22-23, 106-7.
colonnade was to enclose a vast rotunda that would
be a "pantheon" of revolutionary heroes represented in murals and sculpture. As Mills himself
19 For the profile of the original members of the society, see
Frederick L. Harvey, History of the Washington National Monument and Washington National Monument Society (Washington,
was well aware, the Doric order had become em-
The context of the society's efforts is described in Constance M.
in its straightforward accomplishment of the task
blematic of the republican character of Washing-
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), PP. 21-23, 25-26. ton-strong, simple, unaffected, almost primitive
Green, Washington: Village and Capital, r8oo-.878 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 170-73. Clipping from set for it. Yet in Mills's design, the Doric temple,
Washington National Intelligencer, February 11, 1836, signed W20 Clipping, signed W-, Washington National Intelligencer,
(this was a standard byline for Watterston as seen in his papers
at the Library of Congress [hereafter cited as LC]). The clipping February 11, 1836. My knowledge of Custis's proposal is
is in the vertical file at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial gleaned from Watterston's response.
Public Library, Washington, D.C.
21 Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 2d sess., p. 804-
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234
Winterthur
Portfolio
j#/ i/Ili
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ii :,iiii iii-il:;i i CJ !s-: l di'--iii:?i:
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MVT
Fig. 8. Chs. Fenderich, certificate for contributors to the
Fig.
Washington National Monument Society, ca. 1846.
7.
Lithograph; H. 231/4",Rob
W. 171/2". (Prints and Photo-
ment,
ca.
graphs, Library of Congress.)
(Cartograp
When the time finally
came, on July 4, 1848, to
huge
in
i
lay the cornerstone for Mills's vast project-at the
a
massiv
very site L'Enfant had chosen for his pivotal
America
equestrian-Congressman Robert Winthrop of
monumen
Massachusetts
delivered an oration that betrayed
unpreced
the conflict underlying
the whole enterprise.
lican
sim
Speaking
at
the
very
beginning
of the railroad era,
alized-by
Winthrop compared American pla
liberty to a locomoshaft,
tive "gathering
strength as it goes, developing
new
And
to
re
energies
to
meet
new
exigencies,
and
bearing
aloft
appear
ab
its imperial train of twenty millions of people with
cinnatus
rial
which the monument looked forward.22
a speed
which knows no parallel." It was a more
motif
modern image of forward progress than Mills's
chariot, but a more unsettling one as well. Was the
locomotive under control? After a long speech on
22 The Mills design is undated and may have been conceived anytime between 1836 and 1845, when on November 20Washington's character, Winthrop turned to this
the Board of Managers adopted it (Proceedings of the Board ofdark
Managers, Records of the Washington National Monument Society, Record Group 42, National Archives [hereafter cited as
question and gave an equally disturbing an-
Society Records]). The traditional date of 1836, traceable to
discussed in John Zukowsky, "Monumental American Obelisks:
Harvey, is unfounded. The design was described in a society
Centennial Vistas," Art Bulletin 58, no. 4 (December 1976): 576.
broadside probably written by Watterston (a draft in his hand
Zukowsky does not identify the chariot driver as Washington,
survives in the Watterston Papers, LC) and reprinted in Harbut the broadside published by the society does.
vey, History of the Monument, pp. 26-28. The imperial motif is
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Washington
Monument
235
swer. The nation
was
spinning
Whereas
the earlier
populists had rejected ap
all
tension of our ideas
boundaries
and
of a grand monument as antirepublican,
the t
of our Territories"
brought
a tra
Know-Nothings
staked their claim to Washington
political differences.
The
locom
through the very extravagance
of the
project. In
had boasted moments
earlier
seem
Mills's design they found
a perfect expression
for
away irresistibly
their own
from
contradictoryWashingto
impulses toward prelapworld of stern virtue
and
simple
sarian "Doric" republicanism
on the
one hand and
Winthrop could
suggest
was
som
nationalist
mania on the other.
They vowed
to
publicanism behind:
"Let
us
recog
raise the monument
as originally
planned
into "the
mostname
remarkable monument
ever erected
to man fam
mon title to the
and
the
and in our common
... towering above veneration
all others." It was not the buildand his advice, the
all-sufficient
ing that they
wanted to change, only the builders. c
... Let the column which we are about to construct
They resolved to take contributions only from
be at once a pledge and an emblem of perpetual
"Americans," in other words, only from members
union." In the end Winthrop disowned even this
of their party. But by the time they had seized the
solution. Sounding a now familiar theme, he told
monument, the party was passing its peak, and the
Americans that they really had to build the monufund-raising campaign proved to be a disaster:
ment in their own hearts, to make Washington's
three years yielded $51.66.25 For almost twentyrepublic "stand before the world in all its original
five years after this debacle, the monument stood
strength and beauty."23
as a pathetic marble stump in the very heart of the
Mills's design and Winthrop's interpretation capital.
of
The Know-Nothings' failure marked a
it were both ideologically problematic-implausiturning point in the long political history of the
ble efforts to build a static republican ideal into monument.
the
In their bold attempt to reestablish a
imagery of an aggressively expansionist state.link
It with Washington and the original republic,
was this very combination, however, that attracted
they simply revealed how distant he had become. It
was left to the Civil War to decide which nation
political enthusiasm, albeit from an unlikely and
would inherit his unfinished column and his dim,
undesired source. On March 9, 1855, with the
shaft only 150 feet high and the colonnade not
legacy.
even begun, the monument grounds were stormedEven before the Know-Nothings delivered
and seized by members of the Know-Nothings,
a near fatal blow to the monument, the suspitheir
semiclandestine political party that aimed to cion
rid was already beginning to emerge that the
the country of Catholics and foreigners. Threatwhole enterprise was a failure. For one thing, the
ened by social and economic changes beyond their
critics ridiculed the design, particularly the union
control, and eager to blame those changes on of
reGreek colonnade and Egyptian obelisk. Alcent Irish and German immigration, the ranks though
of
Mills had French precedents for just such a
the Know-Nothings swelled in the early 1850s with
combination-including one proposed monument
native-born laborers and artisans from the cities.
by Francois Joseph Bdlanger of about 18oo which
They advanced themselves as the guardians of the
is very close in elevation although more gracefulrevolutionary spirit and the true successors critics
of in the 185os increasingly viewed the design
as a national embarrassment, unthinkable in their
Washington. For a brief, intoxicating period, the
Know-Nothings dreamed of turning his monuown, more "advanced" age. They compared the
ment into an emblem of their own political ascenproject to a broom stuck in a handle, a rolling pin
dancy, of their uncontested title to his memory.24
impaled on three sea biscuits, and other suggestive
images. But there was a sense of spiritual failure
too. Contributions fell far short of the fantastic
23 The oration is reprinted in Harvey, History of the Monu-
sums needed, and construction proceeded fitfully.
ment, pp. 113-30. Congress did donate the site for the monument (after years of reluctance) but considered it a private
In 185o, when the twelve-year-old Henry Brooks
undertaking and refused to appropriate any funds. For a recent
Adams made his first visit to Washington (later reanalysis of the cultural reaction to the railroad in America, see
Leo Marx, "The Railroad-in-the-Landscape: An Iconological
Reading of a Theme in American Art," Prospects to (1985): esp.
90-92.
Nothingism," Journal of American History 60, no. 2 (Septem
309-31; and Jean H. Baker, Ambivalent Americans:
24 Details of the Know-Nothing takeover and of the1973):
famous
Know-Nothing
Party in Maryland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U
"Pope's stone" episode are found in Harvey, History of the
Monu-
versityF.Press, 1977), esp. pp. 30-37.
ment, pp. 52-64. For more general discussion, see Michael
Holt, "The Politics of Impatience: The Origins of Know25 Harvey, History of the Monument, pp. 58-64.
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236
-
Winterthur
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rather desperate rhetoric with which some congressmen pleaded for federal funds to complete
the obelisk when their predecessors had opposed
::-:I-:I'
:-
:
-_
I
i,
_-i
-i:
ii?i
such schemes a few decades earlier. "Complete it,"
one representative argued in 1874, "or look not
... :i -iii:i~ i ! i~ i ::i- ;-'-:-:-::iil:: _ i-i-iii~:iii_-~--::- i-~~:ii:iiii!-!I ll ::ii_-i~~~--~i:i~ ii-i-i::~;- -:-~ii~iii?iii i-ii-_i~: l:i,
back to a noble ancestry; but confess that your na-
tion is in its decadence, and that its days are already numbered." Despite these vehement appeals, Congress rejected all efforts to finish the
monument in time for the Centennial of 1876,
even though it offered a rare moment to review
and interpret the nation's past. There were strong
voices in the press demanding that the monument
be torn down or left to crumble; the New York
Tribune called for the public to "give its energies
instead to cleaning out morally and physically
the city likewise named after the Father of His
Fig. 9. Washington Monument before completion, ca.
186o. (Prints and Photographs, Library of Congress:
Photo, attributed to Mathew Brady.)
counted in his autobiography), he was struck profoundly by the sight of the unfinished marble shaft
sitting in the middle of a dusty, ragged capital (fig.
9). And when he traveled on to Mount Vernon, he
was faced with a similar contradiction: the squalid
road, symbolic of everything wicked in slavebound Virginia, led straight to the man he was
taught to venerate. Although Washington's obelisk
was still going up, albeit slowly, in Adams's rec-
ollection the enterprise was already doomed-as
if no monument could have bridged the gulf
that separated Washington-the-eighteenth-centuryhero from the corruption of nineteenth-century
America.26
Country.'"27
A remarkable but deceptive turn of events took
place during the centennial year. On July 5, 1876,
the two houses of Congress impulsively and unanimously resolved "in the name of the people of the
United States, at the beginning of the second century of the national existence, [to] assume and di-
rect the completion of the Washington Monument."28 Why the sudden turnabout? It was not
because Congress had changed its attitude toward
the past. Only after the anniversary of indepen-
dence had passed, and the country had self-
consciously stepped over the threshold from the
old century into the new, did Congress seize the
opportunity to take action. The timing suggests
that the forces gathering on Winthrop's locomotive
had finally triumphed: the monument was revived
not to make sense of the past, but to launch the
nation into the future.
As the nation emerged from the Civil War into
While the Mills project had still reflected some
ideological seesawing between retrospective and
a disillusioning era of scandal and intrigue, the
prospective viewpoints-between a yearning for
unfinished shaft only heightened this sense of hisrepublican values and a vision of natorical disparity. The stump seemed to represent traditional
a
tional empire-in 1876 the prospective view finally
nation that had lost its way. The symbolic impact of
triumphed. By this time the ethic of enterprise and
a huge, aborted monument to the founding father
material success had carried Americans so far
cannot be underestimated; it helps explain the
from their old republican identity that patriot an
alike seemed to be in essential agreement: th
Hints: Architecture, Sculpture and Painting (London, 1855),
age p.
of Washington was dead, irretrievable. The n
cynic
26 The broom image comes from James Jackson Jarves,
Art-
308; the rolling pin from Leslie's Illustrated 3, no. 72 (April 25,
1857): 321. Other critiques include Horatio Greenough, "Aes-
thetics at Washington," in Form and Function: Remarks on Art,
27 Congressional Record, vol. 2 (June 4, 1874), p. 4580. New
Design, and Architecture, ed. Harold A. Small (Berkeley: UniverTribune, July 1, 1875, p. 6; similar sentiments ar
sity of California Press, 1969), pp. 23-30; and Crayon York
6, pt. Daily
9
expressed
in the Washington Chronicle, February 1, 1873 (cli
(September 1859): 282. The Belanger design is published
in
ping in vertical file, Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Pub
Richard G. Carrott, The Egyptian Revival: Its Sources, Monuments,
Library). The climate of opinion in the 1870s is painted by
and Meaning, 1802-1858 (Berkeley: University of California
Winthrop in his dedication address of 1885 (Dedication of t
Press, 1978), pl. 31. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry
Washington
National Monument [Washington, D.C., 1885] p. 4
Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co.,
28 Congressional Record, vol. 4 (July 5, 1876), p. 4376.
1974), PP- 44-48.
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Washington
Monument
237
tion could unifycritics
around
Washingto
of the 1 85os had objected
mainly to the combination of obelisk
and colonnade,
the criticism
only after dismissing
the
question
two decades
later zeroed in on of
the shafthis
itself. The
tently posed, the
question
le
ton no longer mattered,
not
even
men of culture perceived
it not only
as a productin
of
ment. From thisthepoint
on,
he
drop
artistic dark ages
but also as
quintessential
low
debate, only to reappear
art, representative of an trivialized
illegitimate and threatening vernacular culture.
obelisk's "plainness
appeals for a "fitting"
or The
"worthy"
As a consequence,
the
question
and height,"
American
Architect and Buildingof
News
sneered, "will became
doubtless assert itself an
to the common
plete the monument
aes
the province of "men
of taste."
It
w
mind as a clear achievement
(in the vernacular,
a
who took the most
active
interest
big thing)."
"Brutally, from
its mere size," wrote b
and in the press,
they
who
th
critic Henry
Van Brunt,
summoning set
an image that
debate. The participation
any
evokes the specter of the of
other America
risingsu
to
Know-Nothings make
with
explicit
itself heard, an
"[the obelisk]
must force itself p
was unthinkable.
Yet
the
language
upon
the attention
of the
beholder." Shrinking
dominated the new
from those
discussion
brutal realities of the vernacular,
disgu
cultivatedcritics
minds such as Van Brunt's
de- 187
subtext. When the
of instead
the
monument to be
"characteristica
manded
"elegant reserve and studious refinement"; thea
unadorned
and unelaborated obelisk
they had in mind
particular
Am
by "culture"-insimply
Alan
Trachtenbe
did not require the privileged skills of cul-
privileged domain
refinement,
a
ture toof
appreciate
and therefore could not legitibility, and higher
And
a
mately learning."
represent America. If, as the American
Arhas argued, this definition
cultur
chitect argued, the monumentof
were something
tinctly politicalmore
message.
Culture
like Trajan's Column, "crowded
with eviless than "an official
dence of humanAmerican
thought, skill, and love," then ver
"it
which shielded Americans from other, more
would be a work of art, a true monument, a denktroubling realities, the realities of government mal or think-token as the Germans call it."31
scandal, the decline of rural America, the rise of
While the critics were united in the belief that
urban poverty-everything that made the disparthe nation's most conspicuous monument must adity with the original republic so painfully apparent. vance the claims of their official culture, they were
High culture, and the monument it hoped to by no means agreed on how to accomplish this.
create, would proclaim these realities "uncharac- The most immediate problem centered on credenteristic," not truly American; they belonged in- tials. The architectural press naturally maintained
stead to a netherworld of vulgarity and common
that only an architect was qualified to redesign the
labor.30
For the men of culture of the 1 87os the obelisk
became a cause clkbre because it touched their
anxieties about this "other" America. While the
partial shaft, while the sculptors' lobby had its own
supporters, particularly in Congress. But a deeper
problem afflicted even the most widely trained
candidate for the job: there was no legitimate artistic tradition with which to represent American
culture.
To meet the demands of their own cul29 Typical of the new attitude toward Washington is an editorial in American Architect and Building News 2, no. 103 (Decem- ture, designers had to raid other cultures. When
ber 15, 1877): 397, which says, "no doubt an obelisk is consistent
they began to produce alternative designs for the
with Washington's character, and so, we may say, are a pair of
cavalry boots"; the important point was that a better "form" shaft, some artists tried to incorporate indigenous
could be found than either. In my discussion of prospective
and retrospective viewpoints, I am adapting Erwin Panofsky's
terminology from his Tomb Sculpture (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1964).
30 Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture
and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982),
pp. 143-44. The phrase "characteristically American" is drawn
from a critical piece by James Jackson Jarves, "Washington's
models from native American civilizations, but
most borrowed from a bewildering array of Euro-
pean architectural prototypes-from Italian Romanesque to English Gothic to beaux-arts tinged
by "some of the better Hindu pagodas" (figs.
Monument," New York Times, March 17, 1879, p. 5, and it is
3' American Architect and Building News 4, no. 135 (July 27,
echoed by numerous writers including Henry Van Brunt, Wil- 1878): 25. The criticism contains many references to the "peril"
liam Wetmore Story, and the editors of American Architect, who the obelisk poses to the nation's reputation, the impending
made their meaning plain in calling for a monument "more in "calamity," the national "emergency." Henry Van Brunt, "The
accordance with our intelligence and our culture" (American Washington Monument," American Art Review 1, pt. 1 (1879):
12, 8.
Architect and Building News 4, no. 138 [August 17, 1878]: 54).
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238
10,
Winterthur
11,
12).
The
Portfolio
whole
problem
"national style," which plagued
paigners of the late nineteenth c
compressed into one work. Critic
between the various alternatives;
ble here and there on "technical"
sign, but none of them could arti
or iconographic basis for determi
teristically American" beyond som
visual
ideals.
be searching
"virility" of
Van
Brunt,
for
ex
for a middle ground
American vernacular
"effeminacy"
of
European
high
could not visualize it until he saw
the Chicago school in the next de
The artists and their patrons wer
J&AO
at cross purposes. When Congre
propriate money to complete t
delegated
joint
never
the
responsibility
commission
made
design.
tion as
clear
of
who
its
had
for
own
c
ap
author
Instead of proposing a n
a way of achieving at le
unity of decision, Congress sat by
vidual members jockeyed in and o
eye to advance their own candida
tive member, a senator named Ju
was involved
strung along
infighting
their
in numerous pub
several
candidates
Fig. io. John
Frazer, proposa
among
those
candidate
ington
Monument,
ca. 1879.
voluminous
correspondenc
ed., American
Art and Amer
W. Walker, 1889),
other potential (Boston:
allies E.
demonstrate
graphs, Library of Congress.
congressional committees in char
noyed by Architects and intere
they refused to make any decisio
Into
Casey
this
of
vacuum
the
Army
stepped
Corps
of
Lt
En
hired by the joint commis
struction of the monumen
with vision. While deftly
32 Henry Van Brunt, "The Washington
reportersMonument,"
alike thatAmerhe ha
ican Art Review 1, pt. 2 (1879): 65, 61; his article provides
the
monument,
he
did
pre
broad survey of the alternative proposals for finishing the par
completely
t
tial shaft. For the evolution of cess
his criticism,
see the revising
introductory
essay by William A. Coles in Architecture
and had
Society:
prise. Casey
in Selected
mind
Essays of Henry Van Brunt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univerinconceivable
to
the
cultu
sity Press, Belknap Press, 1969).
nological
marvel
equipp
33 Morrill was in frequent contact
with expatriate
sculptors
elevator
and
electric
ligh
Story and Larkin Mead; Story's
proposal
for
a Florentine
Venetian tower came very close
to being
accepted,
while Mead
most
ancient
of forms,
ru
pushed two plans at once, one with the obelisk and one without
sealed.
Casey
ref
Meanwhile Morrill was also metically
working with
architect
Alber
eral
years, Extensive
revealingcorrespon
it little
Noerr on a completely different
proposal.
dence survives in the Justin Morrill
LC, Generally,
as well as in th
nical Papers,
reports.
h
papers of William Wilson Corcoran, president of the joint com
as
engineering
solutions
mission. Corcoran to Story, March 13, 1879, Corcoran Papers
LC.
gestions; thus the joint c
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Washington
Monument
239
......
.
P4
-Alliii
Pow";" f
.
...
.
Fig.
12. Proposal for
ment, attributed to
Walter
Montgomery,
e
Collections, vol. 1 (Bo
(Prints and Photograp
I
k
-
claim that it was no
only building it.34
Since
the
shaft
commission decided that it would continue build-
w
ing the obelisk until told otherwise by Congress.
Initially, in 1878, Casey redesigned Mills's obelisk
as a 525-foot tower with an iron-and-glass top.
Fre
When in 1882 the joint commission could no
.'
Fig.
11.
longer put off a sculptor who had designed a series
M. of P.
bas-reliefs Hapgood,
to decorate the base of the shaft,
Washington
Monument,
c
gomery,
ed.,
American
Art
34 Many of E.
the details ofW.
Casey's involvement
are described
vol.
1
(Boston:
Walk
in Louis Torres,
"To the Immortal Name and Memory of
George
Photographs,
Library
of
C
Washington": The United States Army Corps of Engineers and the
Construction of the Washington Monument (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, n.d.); however, Torres misses the
covert aspect of Casey's activity. Casey's public posture of no
authority is seen, for example, in Casey to Mead, July 25, 1882,
Society Records, and in a newspaper interview with the Washington Evening Star, February 21, 1885, p. 3-
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240
Winterthur
Portfolio
Cooperin
had saida
was "not
liable to the detailstha
of
confessed
report
criticism." The plain, towering shaft was in its own
obelisk. The commission conveniently decidedway
that
unarguable; it simply could not be subjected to
Casey
ornamentation to disturb the bare surface of his
the kind
it had no authority to ornament the obelisk,
so of critical scrutiny that the men of culture
believed
a true work of art demanded. Casey in
Casey's wish prevailed. Casey then unfolded
his
effect was proposing a new way of experiencing a
own plan to strip off Mills's Egyptian ornament
above the entrance doors, fill in the doors with
monumental work of art, in which power becomes
marble of a matching bond, and create an invisibleparamount-the power the structure at once holds
underground entrance. This the commission de- over the spectator and shares with him. Casey's
cided was within its authority to approve, appar- inviolable obelisk (even more so if we imagine it
ently because the plan had no "artistic" elements.35 closed with its original marble door and shutters)
For reasons of safety Casey had to scuttle the seems to ward off the spectator, to deny even the
underground entrance, but he created the same possibility of entrance; the phallic force of the
effect by outfitting the only remaining opening inshaft serves what the ancient Greeks called an apothe base with a marble door, which when closed
tropaic function, a warning to all comers. At the
made the entrance unnoticeable. He also changed base of the monument there is nothing on the
the plan for the top of the obelisk from his original blank faces of the shaft to give it human scale,
iron-and-glass observatory to a more steeply point- nothing to interrupt the soaring lines that sweep
ing marble pyramidion, ostensibly because the the eye upward to indefinite heights. The tiny door
combining of different surface materials under the at the bottom, virtually crushed by the shaft towfirst plan would have caused engineering difficul- ering over it, is all that yields-but what it does
ties. Casey used this pretext to complete his own yield is exhilarating: an inner sanctum ruled by
aesthetic vision, allowing only two small openings technology where the visitor is ushered by machine
in each face of the pyramidion-all fitted with spe- power to an unrivaled height and a dizzying proscially designed marble shutters that (like the door) pect. From bottom to top the monument asserts its
strength, and yet the visitor thrills with the illusion.
created the illusion of unbroken masonry.36
Backed by a joint commission that wanted re- of heroic command. At the Baltimore monument,
the spectator could only stare up at the figure of
Washington high above; in the nation's capital, the
visitor can take the place of the hero himself and,
from the summit, can survey the whole apparatus
of national power spread out below.37
monument. Fittingly, the New York Times called the
If we recall the twin poles of federalist and refinal result in 1884 "undesigned." Casey's obelisk
sults fast, Casey's strategy worked beautifully.
Since design in effect meant "decoration," Casey
could continue to maintain that he was avoiding
design even as he put the finishing touches on his
was oddly reminiscent of the old Doric ideal of publican commemoration with which the debate
Washington's character, which James Fenimore began-the "sublime" monument that awes the
people and the participatory monument created by
"5 Proceedings of the joint commission, March 29, April 24, the people-we see that Casey's obelisk rather bril1882, Society Records. At this point the joint commission, on liantly synthesizes the two, or more precisely, tran-
Casey's recommendation, suggested that Congress appoint a
separate commission to design a "terrace" below the shaft,
scends them. The Washington Monument both
which could incorporate all the desired ornamentation and set- overpowers and empowers, first diminishing the
tle the question once and for all. Congress again failed to act, visitor into insignificance and then raising him skyhowever, and the joint commission eventually approved Casey's high like a hero. In more ways than one, that
preferred plan for a natural lawn terrace-on the grounds that
it was less expensive (Casey was adept at making his own aes- frightening and exhilarating image from Winthetic choices compelling for reasons of economy) (Proceedings throp's imagination-the locomotive-has become
of the joint commission, December 18, 1884, Society Records; a mirror not only of the forces behind the monu-
Evening Star, February 21, 1885).
s6 Casey to Brig. Gen. Horatio Gouverneur Wright, January 19, 1884, Society Records. Some histories of the monument
37 "The Washington Monument," New York Times, Decem-
credit George Perkins Marsh with the "design" of the final ber 7, 1884, p. 8; James Fenimore Cooper, Notions of the Ameriform. Marsh was an antiquarian and diplomat living in Italy cans Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor, vol. 2 (New York, 1828),
who provided measurements of ancient obelisks and other aes- p. 193. The memorial stones on the interior wall, accessible
thetic suggestions, including the idea of window coverings to from the stairs that wind around the elevator shaft, provide
match the marble. There is no doubt that he influenced Casey,
but Casey's vision was ultimately his own: Marsh approved of
ornamenting the shaft and had no interest in the monument's
technological aspect; see Marsh's letters printed in Harvey, History of the Monument, pp. 299-302.
another component of the experience. Mostly donated by states
and cities, often using local rock, these blocks are inscribed and
sometimes sculpted; they link the monument to other places
throughout the country and thereby add another dimension to
the commanding prospect seen from the summit.
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Washington
Monument
241
ment but also of the monument itself. Both the
railroad and the obelisk were monuments to
Van Brunt, who was forced to acknowledge the
"vast amount of thought and skill" with which
Casey finished the shaft. Not only was the obelisk a
American technology, or, in nineteenth-century
monument
terms, to "ingenuity" and "modern skill," and
both to be admired by the common man, but
it also or
represented an achievement that could be
were powerful symbols of the national destiny,
morethe
easily attributed to the common man, to "the
became so. The New York Times, after blasting
obelisk in December 1884, reversed itself only
people."
twoWhile art was appropriated by an exclumonths later for the monument's dedication,
sivewhen
cultural sphere, which claimed that achievean editorial admitted that there was "something
ment could result only from formal training and
characteristically American" in raising thedeveloped
tallest sensibility, the technological myth of the
structure on earth, towering above even "the
highera-demonstrated,
for example, in the legend of
est cathedral spires designed by the devout
Thomas
andEdison-saw progress and invention as
daring architects of the Middle Ages." There
the was
achievement of self-taught, self-made men, exalso a parallel between the monument's turbulent
emplars of the old republican traits of indepenhistory and the country's "long period of trouble
dence and natural genius. It did not really matter
and tumult": all the time that the monument stood
that Casey failed to fit this profile (his personal
unfinished it was "awaiting the destiny of the Na-background was rarely discussed, perhaps because
tion." Now the monument's fate and the nation's
he seemed much more a man of culture than a self-
fate had converged in "a new era of hope and
made independent). The important point was that
his work was as much "a monument to the skill and
progress."38
And where did the individual stand? Here
enterprise of the American people as to the nobilagain the technological monument offered ity
a powand name which it perpetuates." This point was
erful metaphor, an image of the individualemphasized
caught over and again in newspaper accounts
thatitlavished
print on every ingenious feat from
and swept up in the nation's progress, riding
to
the foundations to the marble shutters to "the most
new heights of personal freedom and happiness.
perfect electrical conductor known to science."40
The image was so appealing that Harper's Weekly
could imagine the experience even before the
It is not only ironic but also somehow troubling
monument opened. Harper's returned to that
the aold
monument designed covertly, against enorcomparison between the obelisk and Trajan'smous
Col-opposition, should so neatly reconcile so
umn, but this time the column came out the many
loser competing ideals-ancient tradition and
because it lacked an elevator. Whereas the visitor
modern technology, republican values and na-
to Trajan's Column could ascend only "by a wearytional progress, communal harmony and individflight of steps," in Washington's obelisk he would
ual enterprise. These are the conflicts of Washingbe "seized upon by the genius of steam, and raised
ton's legacy-whether his name was mentioned or
... in a comfortable elevator almost to the coppernot-that had confused and divided earlier buildapex at its top." Once at the top the visitor woulders, campaigners, and critics. In one sense we
"look down upon a land of freedom," home tomight think of Casey's blank shaft as the ultimate
"scenes of bitter struggle in the past, and now themonument to Washington because in its apparent
quiet city, hid in groves and gardens, sleeping insimplicity it seems to formalize the long-awaited
the shades of perpetual peace.""39 The freedom
resolution. But the actual experience of the monument challenges the nature of this resolution. The
and tranquility of the land below belonged by right
obelisk is in no formal sense a monument of healto the visitor above, privileged as he was to survey
the whole and to find his place within it.
ing or reconciliation. In contrast to the more reThis monument of might and progress had so
much immediate resonance that it captured the ad- 40 Henry Van Brunt, "The Washington Monument," in
American Art and American Art Collections, ed. Walter Montgommiration even of its critics. Instead of demanding
ery, vol. 1 (Boston, 1889), p. 355; Trachtenberg, Incorporation,
special cultural skills to appreciate, the monument
pp. 65-66; American Architect and Building News 17, no. 479
(February 28, 1885): 102. Although
offered an image and an experience of much
by the editors, its very appearance
wider appeal-one that touched even a man like
the article was not written
in American Architect indi-
cates a dramatic shift in the climate of opinion. The sentiment is
echoed almost word for word in Van Brunt's final remarks on
the monument in American Art and Art Collections, 1:368. Leslie's
38 "The Washington Monument," New York Times, FebruaryIllustrated 59, no. 1,526 (December 20, 1884): 278. For other
22, 1885, p. 6.
descriptions of the monument's "ingenuity," see Washington
s9 Eugene Lawrence, "The Washington Monument," Har- Evening Star, December 6, 1884, February 21, 1885; Washington
per's Weekly 28, no. 1458 (November 29, 1884): 789.
Post, February 22, 1885; and many other newspaper accounts.
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242
Winterthur
Portfolio
ger handle (fig. 13). The image of a dagger thrust
in the air stands in stark contrast to the feelings of
"peace and amity" that the monument was supposedly inspiring after the nation's "long night of
disunion."41
This disturbing image might make us wonder
now, as Winthrop seemed to wonder in his difficult
speech of 1848, whether the forces represented by
this monument are really under control, and, if so,
who is engineering them. Is the engineer in fact
"the people"? The monument's answer is not so
reassuring, neither in its history nor in its realiza-
tion. Casey is hardly the appropriate archetype,
ij;
N7" ?44r?:_--:-:~-;i~--ji?
A '.....
the process he commandeered hardly democratic.
And as much as his obelisk still seems to belong to
us, as much as the experience of heroic command
seems to be our own, the monument continually
challenges us with its own power, within and without. Try as we will, we cannot know what authority
it represents, or to what end it is represented.
In the century since its completion, Washington's monument has lost much of the symbolic ap-
peal it once held; the Statue of Liberty, erected
only a year later, has easily surpassed the monument in the national imagination. Recently the
one-hundredth anniversary of the obelisk was
marked with relatively little fanfare, while the cen-
Fig. 13. Invitation to the dedication ceremonies of the
Washington Monument. From Dedication of the Washington National Monument (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1885), frontispiece. (Collection of Kirk
tennial of Miss Liberty became one of the most
extravagant spectacles of our time. The uncertainty of Washington's "example" still haunts his
monument. Instead of resolving the issue, Casey's
obelisk evaded it; even as the monument pro-
Savage.)
claimed allegiance to American ideals, its assertion
of political and technological might undermined a
most cherished ideal-that of the self-reliant, self-
cent Vietnam memorial, it does not open its arms
to visitors, offer them refuge, encourage them to
regulating individual who stands, with Fred ricAuguste Bartholdi's statue, at the mythic core of
reflect. If Casey's monument did indeed resolve
conflict, it was a resolution more by sheer force
than by symbolic embrace. It is impossible to know
how the monument was truly experienced at the
time, but there is reason to believe that despite all
the rhetoric of harmony the monument had a
our republic. If the obelisk is indeed a "mighty
sign" of the national destiny, its implications leave
us as much in doubt as in hope. Ironically the
blank marble walls of this huge memorial resist
patriotic promotion and mythmaking and force us
back on the old questions about our republic.
more militant impact. In the engraving done for
the monument's dedication, the obelisk is set like a
sharply pointed blade into the cross arms of a dag-
41 Boston Evening Transcript, February 24, 1885, p. 7-
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