Jefferson Memorial Research Paper

739 Words3 Pages
My project is to recreate the Jefferson Memorial, which is a round; domed neoclassical monument located in Washington, D.C., dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, a political philosopher, architect, musician, scientist, horticulturist, diplomat, inventor, scholar and third President of the United States. President Thomas Jefferson appreciated the architecture of ancient Rome and the work of Italian Renaissance architecture. John Russell Pope was the architect who originally designed the Jefferson Memorial. After John Russell Pope died in 1937, architects Otto R. Eggers and Daniel P. Higgins completed the construction of the Jefferson Memorial. The Neoclassical style of the Jefferson Memorial is “modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, and Monticello”,…show more content…
Two partners of Pope, Daniel P. Higgins and Otto R Eggers, took over construction of the memorial. The monument is situated on the Tidal Basin directly south of the White House. The Commission preferred the site on the Tidal Basin mainly because it was the most prominent site and because it completed the four-point plan called for by the McMillan Commission (Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol; White House to the Tidal Basin site). Pope designed a very large pantheon-like structure, to sit on a square platform, and to be flanked by two smaller, rectangular, colonnaded buildings. The memorial was constructed with Danby Imperial marble from Vermont for the exterior walls and columns, Tennessee pink marble for the interior floor, Georgian white marble for the interior wall panels, and Missouri grey marble for the pedestal. Indiana limestone was used in construction of the dome-coffered ceiling. The cost of the construction was slightly more than three million. The memorial is over 129 feet tall, the dome is a little over 4 feet thick and the entire memorial weighs in at 32,000 tons. The interior of the memorial has a 19-foot tall, 10,000-pound bronze statue of Jefferson by Rudolph Evans, which was added four years after the dedication in 1943. The statue was completed in 1947, later than scheduled, as the Second World War caused a shortage of bronze. The statue of Jefferson has been placed in a way that he looks out from the interior of the Memorial toward the White House. This was purposely done to represent the Age of Enlightenment and Jefferson as a philosopher and political leader. The interior walls are engraved with passages from Jefferson’s writings. Most prominent are the words, which are inscribed in a frieze below the dome: “I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Jefferson takes this sentence
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