Presidential memorial built as a memorial to the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence
General Information
Take 14th St NW to Raoul Wallenberg Pl SW. Turn left onto Raoul Wallenberg Pl SW. Slight left onto Maine Ave SW. Follow Ohio Dr SW to E Basin Dr SW.
The Jefferson Memorial, built from 1939 to 1943 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, honors Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence. The neoclassical memorial in West Potomac Park on the Tidal Basin was designed by John Russell Pope, referring to the Roman Pantheon and Jefferson's own rotunda at the University of Virginia. It is a circular colonnade of Ionic columns and a shallow dome, about 165 feet across and open to the air, of white Vermont marble, and was ranked fourth on the AIA's 2007 list of America's favorite architecture.
Highlights
- Statue: a 19-foot, 10,000-pound bronze of Jefferson by Rudulph Evans (added in 1947)
- Pediment: a sculpture by Adolph Weinman of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration
- Cherry trees: Japanese cherries, a gift from Japan in 1912, ring the Tidal Basin and bloom in early spring
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jefferson Memorial", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
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