Exhibition Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

Notebook opened wide to four sketches of monument that looks different from final Washington Monument. Sketches are surrounded by notes and calculations in pencil and ink. — Robert Mills. *Design for the Washington Monument*, 1835–1840. Robert Mills Papers, Manuscript Division (006.00.00)

Artist rendering of proposed Washington monument shows the obelisk poking through clearing in clouds. Lively scene surrounds the monument. — Charles Fenderich. *Design of the National Washington Monument, Lithographed from the original design by Robert Mills*. Baltimore: E. Weber, 1846. Prints & Photographs Division

Monument for the First President

In 1845, the Washington National Monument Society chose architect Robert Mills to design the memorial to the first president. Mills’s design, which consisted of an obelisk with a neoclassical, columned surround, was only partly built when the Society folded in 1854. Mills died the following year. After the Civil War, the Army Corps of Engineers took over the project. Architects submitted new designs, but when the monument was completed in 1884, Mills’s tall obelisk was still its central feature. It opened to the public in 1886.