The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is, we are told, 555 feet high -- higher than the spires of Cologne Cathedral, higher than St. Peter’s in Rome, much higher than the Pyramids. When George Washington died, in December 1799, the new federal capital had already been named in his honor. As a further gesture, the House of Representatives resolved that a marble monument should be built, “so designed as to commemorate the great events of his military and political life.” Washington’s body was to be entombed beneath the shrine. But for various reasons, some unedifying, it was never erected. The soaring obelisk that we call the Washington Monument was a later project, not completed until a hundred years after George Washington had achieved
