40 Fun Facts About Jefferson Memorial

Wartime metal rationing meant the Jefferson Memorial opened in 1943 with a statue made of what, painted bronze?

Plaster stood in for four years. The bronze Jefferson, 19 feet tall, was not installed until April 1947, once wartime restrictions on metal had eased.

The Jefferson Memorial statue faces north across the water toward which famous Washington building?

The White House stands due north in a straight line, and the president who dedicated the memorial had the view between the two cleared.

Inside the Jefferson Memorial, the bronze Jefferson holds which founding document in his left hand?

Declaration of Independence in hand, the statue shows Jefferson in mid-life, and a carving over the entrance shows him presenting the same text to Congress.

The Jefferson Memorial's domed, columned design was modeled on which ancient Roman temple that Jefferson admired?

The Pantheon in Rome also shaped the library Jefferson designed for his own university, which the memorial's architect named as a second model.

In 1938, society women chained themselves to what at the Jefferson Memorial's building site to halt construction?

Cherry trees were the cause of the so-called Cherry Tree Rebellion, which fizzled after the president joked that he would have the women transplanted too.

Which city's mayor sent the 1912 gift that draws spring crowds to the Tidal Basin beside the Jefferson Memorial?

Tokyo sent about three thousand flowering saplings in 1912, a gift that now anchors a yearly spring festival around the water.

Protesters were arrested inside the Jefferson Memorial in 2011 after a court upheld a ban on doing what there?

Dancing in the chamber was treated as demonstrating without a permit, and a silent flash mob that May ended with protesters in handcuffs.

Some say the Jefferson Memorial statue keeps a wary eye on which political rival, honored outside the Treasury?

Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson's great foe in the first cabinet, has his own statue on the south side of the Treasury Building, roughly where the bronze Jefferson gazes.

The Jefferson Memorial statue stands on Minnesota granite ringed by Missouri marble to honor which Jefferson land deal?

Louisiana Purchase land became parts of both states, so their stone lies under his feet, while white Georgia marble lines the walls around him.

Before the Jefferson Memorial was built, its Tidal Basin site held which whites-only attraction, closed in 1925?

A bathing beach drew thousands of swimmers to the spot on summer days, but Congress ordered it dismantled rather than integrate it.

Which U.S. president laid the Jefferson Memorial's cornerstone in 1939 and dedicated the building four years later?

Franklin Roosevelt became a Jefferson admirer after reading a friend's book about him, then pushed the project through years of fights over its design and site.

The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated on April 13, 1943, a date chosen to mark which moment in Jefferson's life?

His birthday fell exactly 200 years earlier, in 1743, and the pedestal under the statue is carved with the years he was born and died.

The Jefferson Memorial honors the man who held which place in the line of United States presidents?

Third in line after Washington and Adams, Jefferson served from 1801 to 1809 and was the first president inaugurated in the new capital city.

Which architect of the National Gallery of Art designed the Jefferson Memorial but died before construction began?

John Russell Pope died of cancer in 1937, so his partners Otto Eggers and Daniel Higgins finished the design, while younger rivals dismissed him as a dinosaur.

With its marble dome and ring of columns, the Jefferson Memorial is a textbook example of which architectural style?

Neoclassical design echoed Jefferson's own taste: he taught himself architecture from the books of the Italian classicist Andrea Palladio.

The gleaming white marble on the outside of the Jefferson Memorial was quarried in which New England state?

Vermont supplied the Imperial Danby marble outside and Georgia the marble inside, a pairing chosen to stand for the young country from New England to the Deep South.

One wall of the Jefferson Memorial carries Jefferson's warnings about which institution that he himself took part in?

Slavery is denounced there in Jefferson's own words, which call it despotism and say that freedom for the enslaved is written in the book of fate.

Which federal agency is responsible for looking after the Jefferson Memorial in Washington?

National Park Service care comes through its National Mall and Memorial Parks division, part of the Department of the Interior.

Which skyscraper topped the 2007 poll of America's favorite architecture, in which the Jefferson Memorial placed fourth?

Empire State Building took first place in the survey run for the American Institute of Architects, which asked more than two thousand members of the public.

Which home that Jefferson designed for himself, rather than the Jefferson Memorial, appears on the back of the nickel?

Monticello first appeared on the nickel in 1938, the year work started on the memorial, and the house was one of the buildings the architect echoed.

The Jefferson Memorial stands on filled land that engineers reclaimed from the mudflats of which river?

Potomac mud dredged by Army engineers in the 1880s made the land, and the Tidal Basin beside it was built to flush a silting harbor channel.

Which civil rights leader's memorial shares the Tidal Basin shoreline with the Jefferson Memorial in Washington?

Martin Luther King looks across the water as a stone figure, and his memorial's street number, 1964, salutes the Civil Rights Act of that year.

One Jefferson Memorial wall quotes a religious freedom law Jefferson wrote for which state, ending its official church?

Virginia lost its state church through the act, and the memorial pairs that text with a closing line Jefferson later wrote to James Madison.

The Jefferson Memorial's architect also designed which Washington building, home of the original U.S. Constitution?

National Archives was finished in 1935, and Congress first planned to put the memorial on a small plot right beside it.

The vow against tyranny carved around the Jefferson Memorial's dome came from Jefferson's letter to which doctor?

Benjamin Rush received the letter in 1800, and in it Jefferson was defending the Constitution's refusal to recognize an official religion.

One Jefferson Memorial inscription compares keeping outdated laws to making a grown man wear which item from his youth?

His boyhood coat was Jefferson's image for laws that never change, from an 1816 letter arguing that institutions must keep pace with the times.

The 26 columns circling the Jefferson Memorial's open-air chamber belong to which classical order of architecture?

Ionic columns ring the whole chamber, and the builders gave neither their number nor the count of steps any hidden meaning.

John McShain, the contractor who built the Jefferson Memorial, also built which of these giant government landmarks?

The Pentagon was one of more than 100 capital-area jobs for McShain, a Philadelphian nicknamed The Man Who Built Washington.

Which sculptor beat 100 rival entries to win the commission for the Jefferson Memorial's towering bronze statue?

Rudulph Evans, born in Washington and trained in France, also sculpted the William Jennings Bryan and J. Sterling Morton figures made for the Capitol's statue collection.

Jefferson died in 1826, the year carved on the Jefferson Memorial statue's pedestal, on which famous date?

July 4 that year was the fiftieth anniversary of the nation's founding, and John Adams died the very same day, a few hours after Jefferson.

The Jefferson Memorial echoes which library building that Jefferson designed for the university he founded?

The Rotunda was finished shortly after Jefferson died and stands 77 feet tall and 77 feet wide, built around books where other colleges put a chapel.

Built on reclaimed land, the Jefferson Memorial closed in 1969 for repairs to stop which long-running problem?

Sinking ground had pushed the nearby road and sidewalks up by three feet, so engineers installed concrete struts to stop the settling.

The black stain that spread over the Jefferson Memorial's white dome after 2006 turned out to be what?

Algae, fungi and bacteria had formed a living film on the marble, and cleaning crews turned to specialized lasers to remove it.

Behind the Jefferson Memorial statue, a stack of books and stalks of which crop recall Jefferson the farmer?

Corn stalks tucked behind his legs stand for Jefferson's love of the land and agriculture, a detail visible only to those who walk around the back.

Years before the Jefferson Memorial, its architect lost the contest to design a Washington shrine to which president?

Abraham Lincoln got his temple from Henry Bacon instead, whose design beat several 1912 proposals by the same architect, three decades before his own dome opened.

Cissy Patterson, who led the 1938 fight against building the Jefferson Memorial, owned which kind of business?

Newspapers gave her the megaphone: her two Washington dailies attacked the plan in front-page stories, partly to needle a president she opposed.

A small memorial near the Jefferson Memorial honors which Founding Father who refused to sign the Constitution?

George Mason wrote the state charter of rights that inspired the Bill of Rights, and his memorial, opened in 2002, sets his sculpture beside a pool in a restored garden.

Before his presidency, the man honored by the Jefferson Memorial was the first American to hold which cabinet post?

Secretary of State was the job George Washington offered Jefferson soon after he came home from France, years before he reached the presidency.

Adolph Weinman, who carved the scene above the Jefferson Memorial's entrance, also designed which classic American coin?

Mercury dime designs made Weinman famous among collectors: more than two billion were struck, and he also created the Walking Liberty half dollar.

Over the Jefferson Memorial's entrance, a relief shows Jefferson and fellow drafters in 1776, a group known as what?

Committee of Five members included John Adams and Roger Sherman, though Jefferson was the primary author of the text they handed to Congress.