Built: 1938-1943 Cost: $3,192,312.00 Designed by: John Russell Pope Type: Monument Maximum Height: 129 feet / 39 meters Location: South bank of the Tidal Basin at 14th Street, Northwest, Washington, United States
C reated by an act of Congress passed in 1934, the Jefferson Memorial is probably the second-best known Jeffersonian tribute, after the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial ("Gateway Arch") in Saint Louis. In spite of the initial enthusiasm for the project, it was five years later, on November 15th, 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally laid the cornerstone. The Memorial is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, a type of architecture brought to the United States by Jefferson, himself. In fact, the design of the memorial was tailored to Jefferson's own well-documented tastes. Inside, there is a bronze statue of the president by Rudolph Evans, and another sculpture showing five members of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence submitting their report to the Continental Congress.
The Jefferson Memorial has not been without controversy. The Commission of Fine Arts considered its design too similar to the Lincoln Memorial. Their objections made it all the way to President Roosevelt's office. It was he who made the final decision to go ahead with the pantheon design. In addition, the location on the District's Tidal Basin caused concern because a number of Japanese cherry trees had to be cut down. In fact, protesters chained themselves to the trees to prevent their demise. Even today, the memorial is the object of some scorn because the Tidal Basin can become malodorous on warm days.
When the Jefferson Memorial was finished, it was ridiculed as "Jefferson's muffin."
171 cherry trees were moved to make room for the memorial. An additional 1,000 were planted when it was finished.
This structure weighs an estimated 32,000 tons.
The bronze statue of Jefferson inside the Memorial was dedicated in 1943.
The statue is 19 feet tall and weighs five tons. It replaced an earlier one made of plaster.
August, 2001: A project is started to replace the memorial's lights. The old ones make the sparkling white monument look dim and yellow at night. The incandescent lights will be replaced by high-tech LEDs that will illuminate the structure in a brilliant white light while saving millions in energy costs.
June, 2007: Concerns are raised about the Jefferson Memorial slowly tilting and sinking into the swamp that Washington, DC was built upon. According to the Washington Post, this has been a problem for decades because the monument is standing on top of caissons sunk into an artificial mud flat, and if you know where to look there are signs of trouble like cracked concrete, and meters which measure how much the monument is listing.
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