The Presidency: Celebrating the Monument

On clear nights airline pilots can see the shimmering marble flanks of the Washington Monument for 25 miles, and they bank into their landing pattern as the faithful sentinel looks on. Laid out as a city of circles and curves, Washington can be a bewildering maze to visitors. But they can see the brave silhouette from almost anywhere in the District of Columbia and use it as a compass to locate other monuments and eventually to find their way out of the great, gray federal wilderness.

Mornings near sunrise, John Williams, a national park service ranger at the monument grounds, wheels his Toyota up out of the underpasses near the Kennedy Center. When he sees the spire, he feels better. The monument always says something a little different when it greets him. The Maryland marble of which it is constructed has a special quality that picks up the light of the hour and seems to subtly intensify it. “There it is,” Williams says to himself, and then he studies the graceful shape to see what shades of gold or pink or gray are mixed in the coming of day.

Lady Bird Johnson understood that language too. She used to sit on the Truman Balcony of the White House and look at the monument as the sun went down and the swallows swooped around it. Almost every minute, she told friends, the light changed, shifting from pinks to the final deep purple, a splendid spectacle that would have held George Washington in its spell. Her husband, who was rarely humbled, used to fall silent when his helicopter came close in beside the monument on its approach to the White House South Lawn. From the window of the presidential helicopter, the stone expanse seems to blot out everything on the horizon and reach to the heavens.

Nearly 1.3 million people come to look at the monument every year. To reach its pinnacle, they must ride elevators, since the 897 steps that used to be an athletic challenge to young boys have been closed for fear of crime and vandalism.

This week we will give the Washington Monument another pat on the back. On Friday a clutch of history buffs will commemorate the 100th anniversary of its dedication. Perhaps its long struggle to maturity has given it special qualities of endurance. The monument has settled only about two inches in its century, though it was built perilously near a swamp. It is struck by lightning dozens of times each year. One crazed man scared everybody a few years ago when he threatened to bomb the structure.

The 24,500-lb. cornerstone was laid in 1848. The monument rose to 154 ft. before a lot of trouble, including the Civil War, brought construction to a halt. The U.S. Government took over in 1876, strengthened the foundation and resumed building the upper monument three years later. But the new marble was slightly different in wearing quality, and a 26-ft. band was fixed in place before engineers rematched the stone. That band is noticeable today. In December 1884, a 100-oz. aluminum cap was placed on the spike-shaped peak. Then on a wintry Saturday morning in February, the dapper President Chester Arthur, according to a contemporary account, “laid his silk hat at his side, slowly removed his heavy doeskin gloves and deposited them in it, held his eyeglasses on his nose” and read the official dedication. Mathew Brady, the famous photographer of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, who had also photographed the monument’s construction, was on hand to record the finish. He snapped a picture of the dedication ceremony from the top of a nearby building.

This week’s celebration will not be so dramatic. But the meaning will be just as profound. George Washington’s monument and his nation are still alive and doing well.