The Washington Monument

Washington Monument, Washington D.C.

The Washington Monument is 169 metres tall and took 36 years to build – not because the engineering was complicated, but because the funding ran out in 1854 and the project sat unfinished for 25 years. When work resumed in 1879, the builders used marble from a different quarry. The colour difference is visible as a faint line at roughly a third of the way up, a permanent record of the political and financial arguments that interrupted the project. It was the tallest structure in the world when completed in 1884, briefly, before the Eiffel Tower.

The monument stands at the centre of the National Mall, oriented on an east-west axis toward the Lincoln Memorial and a north-south axis toward the White House. The reflecting pool west extends toward the Lincoln Memorial; the Capitol dome is visible to the east. Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s original street grid design intended the monument to sit at the mathematical intersection of those axes, but the ground there was too unstable for the foundation. The monument was repositioned slightly to the southeast – you can see where the intended intersection was marked with a small stone in the ground.

Visiting

Entry requires a free timed pass from recreation.gov (advance booking) or a same-day pass from the Washington Monument Lodge at the base (available from 09:00, limited supply). The elevator to the observation deck at 152 metres takes 70 seconds. The view from the top is the best available view of central Washington – the radial street layout L’Enfant designed is most legible from this elevation, with the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, White House, and Jefferson Memorial all visible simultaneously. The interior elevator shaft walls have commemorative stones from states, cities, and foreign nations, visible through small windows in the cabin.

The Mall

All memorials and museums on the Mall are free to enter. Key stops at the west end: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (wall of polished black granite engraved with 58,318 names, designed by Maya Lin when she was a 21-year-old student); the Korean War Veterans Memorial (19 steel soldiers on a ground-level patrol, more affecting than its description suggests); the Lincoln Memorial (the chamber extends 30 metres back from the entrance and the Lincoln statue is considerably larger than the building’s exterior prepares you for).

The National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History (both free, both Smithsonian) are on the north side of the Mall, east of the Monument.

Eating

The Mall itself has food trucks and kiosks but nothing worth a meal. Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street NW – 20 minutes north by Metro – has been serving half-smokes (a DC-specific sausage) since 1958 and is among the more specific food experiences the city offers. The Penn Quarter neighbourhood east of the Monument has a good range of restaurants.

Getting Around

Smithsonian Station (Blue/Orange/Silver lines) is the nearest Metro stop to the Monument. The Mall is flat and walkable end-to-end in about an hour. Capital Bikeshare docks are throughout the Mall area and work well for longer traverses. Reagan National Airport (DCA) connects by Metro directly to the city in about 20 minutes.