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Description:
Beautifully engraved Certificate from the Washington National Monument Society issued around 1849. This historic document has an ornate border around it with vignettes of George Washington flanked by two allegorical women, the monument complete with the Pantheon, and the Obelisk of the Monument. The Pantheon was never completed. It also shows the height of the Obelisk was to be 500 feet, but it ended up being 555 feet. This has the printed signatures of various society members including President Zachary Taylor and it has the hand signature of George M. Rupp as Agent. This document is over 153 years old. Zachary Taylor, (1784-1850), 12th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. A career soldier who never voted, he served fewer than 500 days in the WHITE HOUSE. Yet he significantly influenced political developments during the first half of 1850, when there was a domestic crisis and a grave possibility of civil war. Although long a slaveholder, Taylor was as much a Westerner as a Southerner. He was nationalistic in his orientation, seeking, above all, to preserve the Union. THE SOCIETY After all these attempts to honor Washington had failed, a group of private citizens from Washington, D. C., took it upon themselves to rectify this absence of a national monument to the first president. These influential citizens formed the Washington National Monument Society. After establishing their headquarters in the basement of the City Hall, they began a fund raising campaign. In order to give everyone in the country a chance to contribute to the monument, they limited the amount that each person could contribute to a dollar a year. Fund raising for the monument hit its first of many snags during Andrew Jackson's administration, when the country suffered financial problems due to political conflict between the President, Congress, and the Bank of the United States. By 1836, only $28,000 had been collected, but it was enough to encourage the Society to hold a national competition for the design of the monument. The Washington Monument was built between 1848 and 1884 as a memorial to George Washington, first President of the United States. Its construction took place in two major phases, 1848-56, and 1876-84--the Civil War and a lack of funds causing the intermittent hiatus. Plans for a national monument began as early as 1783 when Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant proposed to Congress that an equestrian statue of George Washington be erected. Although the Monument was authorized by Congress, no action was taken by the time Washington died in 1799. His death rekindled public aspiration for an appropriate memorial to him, and John Marshall proposed that a special sepulcher be erected for the General within the Capitol itself. Lack of funds postponed construction, but Marshall persevered, and in 1833 he and James Madison formed the Washington National Monument Society. By 1836 the Society advertised for competitive architectural designs. The winning architect was Robert Mills, whose design called for a neoclassical plan which provided for a nearly-flat-topped obelisk surrounded by a circular colonnade on which would stand a statue of Washington in a chariot. Inside the colonnade statues of 30 prominent Revolutionary War heroes would be displayed. In an elaborate Fourth of July ceremony in 1848, the cornerstone was laid. Lack of funds and the illegal election which placed the Washington Monument Society in the hands of the Know-Nothings, a political party, caused delays. After the Know Nothings returned all records to the original society in 1858, the Civil War interrupted construction. When Lt.Col.Thomas L.Casey, Mills' successor, resumed the project in 1876, he redesigned the monument to resemble an unadorned Egyptian obelisk with a pointed pyramidion. The original design was greatly altered, producing an unembellished obelisk. The Corps of Engineers of the War Department was placed in charge of the final construction, and the monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885, and opened to the public on October 9, 1888. Weighing 90,854 tons, the Washington Monument stands 555' 5-1/8" tall. The walls of the monument range in thickness from 15' at the base to 18'' at the upper shaft. They are composed of white marble from Maryland and Massachusetts, underlain by granite, the whole supported by interior ironwork. A slight color change is perceptible at the 152' -level. A flight of 897 steps rises to the observation area in the pyramidion. Inserted into the interior walls are 192 carved stones presented by individuals, societies, cities, States, and nations of the world. An elevator takes visitors to the top, where they can gaze over the city from the monument's windows. In 1996, the Washington Monument Restoration Project was kicked off with Target Stores joining the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation to help restore this national treasure. Guaranteeing $1 million, Target serves as the lead sponsor working with the foundation to raise awareness and an additional $4 million in donations from corporate partners. The restoration will include: constructing scaffolding for the entire 555-foot, 5 1/8-inch monument; sealing 500 feet of exterior and interior stone cracks; pointing 64,000 linear feet of exterior joints; cleaning 59,000 square feet of interior wall surface; sealing eight observation windows and eight aircraft warning lights; repairing 1,000 square feet of chipped and patched stone; pointing 3,900 linear feet of interior joints; and preserving and restoring 192 interior commemorative stones. The projected completion year for the project is 2000. The origin of columns is often convoluted from their beginning to reality. This one about the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., originated from a clipping from an Associated Press story which was published in The Daily Times nearly a decade ago - Jan. 1, 1993, to be exact. This article related that some 1 million visitors take the 70-second elevator ride to the top of the 555-foot, 5 1/8 inch high monument but few ever take the time to see a f
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Reference#: wasnatmonsoc |
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