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photo: Carol M. Highsmith
In 1833 Robert Mills, at the time the Architect of Public Buildings for the federal government, won the design competition sponsored by the Washington National Monument Society. His 555-foot-tall obelisk, a mixture of Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian styles, took nearly 40 years to complete as construction was interrupted by cash shortfalls and the Civil War. For several years it was the world’s tallest structure.
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 3, 2007 4:54 PM.
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Comments (3)
This monument is spectacular. I used it to determine where my location was while I was sight seeing in Washington one day. If you were to look at it up close, you can actually see where construction was interrupted during the Civil War. There is a color difference in the stones when they continued construction. Think twice before going to the top. I felt like the structure was going to snap in two and as if we were swaying back and forth from the wind. Couldn't wait to get back down but definitely worth the view!
Posted by Jesus Guzman | February 10, 2007 8:03 PM
Posted on February 10, 2007 20:03
12?
This is at twelve?
Don't get me wrong. It's cool and all, and sure it used to be tall, but come on. It's a big obelisk that you can walk around in. How architecurally complex is that?
Posted by Craig Johnson | March 15, 2007 6:11 PM
Posted on March 15, 2007 18:11
I keep seeing comments throughout the 150, similar to Craig's; disbelief that the building/structure is in the list, or placed so high in the list.
Remember, it isn't a listing of "America's *BEST* Architecture" (say, as determined by a panel of distinguished architects, based on daring design, complexity, originality, importance to architecture, etc...)
It is a listing of "America's Favorites." So a building's complexity, or lack thereof, has nothing, directly, to do with the ranking it ultimately received.
2,000+ AIA members nominated the starting pool of structures. (Presumably, that is where considerations for style, design, impact, were influencing the nominators.) Ending up with 247 that went into the subsequent public polling, for "likeability" scoring to get to these top 150.
The full details of the process are shown on this website's "Methodology" link.
Posted by Chris | March 16, 2007 12:06 PM
Posted on March 16, 2007 12:06