The capital of the United States is home to hundreds of monuments. The most famous, like the Lincoln Memorial, receive millions of annual visitors. The least famous are mostly neglected and often falling into disrepair. Beyond their aesthetic intrigues, each monument has its own history: who lobbied for it, who approved it, when was it built, etc. The primary goal of this project is to catalog every federal monument, explore their histories, and see what I can learn about the most powerful country in the world through the study of what it chooses to memorialize.

My starting points are this map and catalog by the National Capital Planning Commission and this Wikipedia page. I’m limiting my exploration to federal monuments for a few reasons. First, it would take too long to explore the non-federal monuments. Second, the local DC government’s choices are not that interesting to me (or to most, I might add). Third, federal monuments are a pain to plan and build. There are many stakeholders, to include the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts, National Park Service and occasionally Congress. This makes them more interesting to me, as their existence is the result of a prolonged bureaucratic process and they reflect the compromise of these different organizations and (perhaps to a greater extent than local monuments) the will of the American people. They also have significant documentation in the National Archives, so for many of them you can see the Congressional Record and the official plans, which enriches their stories. Beyond a brief writeup for each monument, I also plan to score each monument on a number of characteristics and create a ranked list of my favorite DC monuments.

Khalil Gibran

View from sidewalk, with fountain in background	Dry fountain

You’re walking northwest along Massachusetts Ave towards the Naval Observatory. You wanted to catch a glimpse of the Vice President’s residence or the British embassy. Instead, you get Khalil Gibran’s creepy head abounded with granite and a star-shaped fountain. And some of his famous quotes.

Who was Khalil Gibran? I certainly didn’t know Gibran was born in present-day Lebanon in 1883 but moved to the United States as a teen. He was a poet and visual artist (mostly paintings and sketches) and a philosopher? His most famous work, The Prophet, was influential during the 1960s and Elvis really enjoyed it. My general impression is he was a prominent intellectual in the early 20th century, but has largely been forgotten about outside of literary circles and Lebanese-American affinity groups. His Wikipedia page is fairly lonely, with around 2,000 page views each month.

The interesting part of this monument is its provenance. Why build a monument for the centennial of an artist of middling fame? The congressional resolution to build this monument started in May 1984. Notably, it was completely privately funded; the Khalil Gibran Centennial foundation raises $1 million in donations. The impetus for this monument appears to be the 1984 Beirut barracks bombings, wherein 241 Americans were killed. The originator, Sheryl Ameen, said about the monument: “it’s important that, symbolically, there be a peaceful Lebanon to balance the present reality of a war-torn Lebanon.”

So, it was less about him and more about his Arab-American status. While the US had largely moved on from Lebanese conflict by the time of its dedication in May 1991, there was a new Middle Eastern country to fret about (Iraq). The memorial could function like something of a peace offering to Arab-Americans as it celebrated the legacy of a great poet who was nothing like Saddam Hussein. Note the message of one of the selected quotes:

I love you, my brother, whoever you are—whether you worship in your church, kneel in your temple, or pray in your mosque. You and I are children of one faith, for the diverse paths of religion are fingers of the loving hand of one Supreme Being, a hand extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, eager to receive all.

And indeed, part of President George H.W. Bush’s dedication speech called for us “to renew Gibran’s message of tolerance and compassion for a world too often at odds rather than at peace. Perhaps nowhere is this more important than in the Middle East, Gibran’s homeland, where peace still wanders as the region’s prodigal son.” I find it surprising that they passed a resolution to honor a Lebanese-American right after the barracks bombing. It would be akin to making a monument for an Iraqi-American during the Iraq War.

Overall, this monument is solid. I didn’t see the fountain in action as I visited in the heart of winter. Despite being off the beaten path, it has a nice location across from the British embassy. Set in an area with limited foot traffic, they could not have expected it to get much attention, and perhaps that was by political design.

Meridian Hill Park

Serenity

My shitty, snowy picture

Wikipedia's picture

This memorial is more of a mystery than most. First, it does not depict the person it is meant to honor. It honors William Henry Schuetze, who is decidedly not a woman. Second, it misspells his name! Note the statue has Scheutze instead of Schuetze. Third, it’s deteriorating and is frankly a little scary. Look at the lady’s pockmarked face – that is the result of the community’s protest of the statue and its thiccc thighs. Her nose is missing a la Voldemort. Her left hand has disappeared, along with a toe. She sits on a pillar with a misspelled name, dedicated to an obscure man. It is decidedly not serene, calm, peaceful, etc.

Also, who the hell is William Henry Schuetze? He doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. While the statue does, it gets basic biographical facts wrong about the man. It asserts that he died in 1902, but somehow managed to become the president of the International Harvester Company before his death in 1927. Perhaps his ghost was president, or he faked his death to get out of a suffocating marriage? While Schuetze has some writings in the national archives, I couldn’t see any of them. Indeed, all I could gather was that he went to the Naval Academy and was mentioned in President Chester A. Arthur’s second state of the union address. Scheutze was involved in an 1881 rescue mission to save stranded members of the Jeannette from a failed arctic expedition. He was mentioned by name as bringing home the remains of Lieutenant De Long, the commander of the disastrous Jeannette expedition.

While I have no reason to doubt that Scheutze was a capable naval officer and a solid dude, this dedication is likely more a function of his wealthy friend, Charles Deering, than his own accomplishments. Deering was the guy who was president and heir of International Harvester, Wikipedia be damned. Deering was classmates with Scheutze at the Naval Academy and a classic cultured rich guy with a taste for the arts. He liked Serenity and had a version commissioned for his villa in Barcelona, but it didn’t fit aesthetically so he had a massive classical sculpture and nowhere to put it. Meridian Hill Park seemed like a good place for it to go. While the history is likely lost to time, one can imagine that Deering used connections to get his donation through Congress and placed in Meridian Hill Park. To avoid being gauche or braggadocios, he dedicated it to his friend from the Naval Academy, who had passed away 20 years earlier from “natural causes.” The Federal Statute that contains the dedication says very little, other than the statue would be provided at no cost to the federal government. So there’s one theory for this statue’s existence: wealthy guy + statue surplus + political influence + too much humility to self-dedicate = serenity.

My other theory is more fanciful, and would have required great foresight on behalf of Deering. Perhaps Deering knew it was going to be vandalized by the community and neglected over time. Maybe it’s a statue and a kind of performance art as well: serenity, a state where one is left alone, cannot survive being left alone. It takes intervention and proactivity to maintain serenity. Otherwise, outside forces (vandals, time, animals, weather, etc.) will disturb it. While the circumstances of the original dedication suggest a lack intentionality and favors a more serendipitous interpretation, I like option two. And so it goes with God.

President James Buchanan

My shitty, snowy picture

Google review that validates this project and confirms people really do care about monuments.

According to this monument, James Buchanan was “the incorruptible statesman whose walk was upon the mountain ranges of the law.” But I suspect Buchanan is one of the last known presidents in American history. He is overshadowed by and often blamed for the Civil War. Imagine being the president before Lincoln? That’s a tough break as far as legacy is concerned. I will not deign to give a presidential biography here, but this is a magnificent sculpture. He sits high above onlookers, like a miniature Lincoln Memorial. He’s flanked by statues depicting law and democracy. It’s quite pretty and kitty corner of the reflecting pool.

This monument is interesting for its controversy. See, the Google maps reviewer was onto something! Buchanan was a bachelor for life, but his niece, Harriet Lane, left $100,000 for a federal memorial to her uncle. The government had 15 years from the time of her death in 1903 to erect the monument lest the money be returned to her estate. But many members of Congress were opposed to a monument. Senator Irvine Lenroot wrote “the best thing we can do for Mr. Buchanan is to forget him.” Ouch. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge took issue with “[erecting] a statue to the only President upon whom rests the shadow of disloyalty in the great office to which he was elected.” It didn’t help that there was a push to put the Lincoln Memorial in Meridian Hill park, but instead they got Buchanan. The monument was approved in the nick of time in 1918, and took over a decade to complete.

Among the cast of characters to be memorialized in the nation’s capital, it is interesting that notoriety makes it harder than obscurity. Khalil Gibran and William Schuetze pass without controversy, but James Buchanan, who was a president, has to fight tooth and nail for his statue. Key to all three, however, is private funding. It must take enormous popularity to get a publicly funded monument! There’s also an element of priority in the monument decisions. During the controversy, Senator Lodge remarked that it makes no sense to memorialize Buchanan, when Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, etc. do not have monuments. That may be so, but they don’t have exploding $100,000 funds to construct their monuments.

Now, it seems that the public mostly accepts the monument. There are occasional blog posts (exceptionally cranky ones) and news articles the monument’s litigious history, but by and large it is accepted. During the great monument re-examination of the late 2010s, there appears to have been no concern over Buchanan and his connections to slavery.