Monuments and memorials in the United States

• Mount Rushmore• Lincoln Memorial• Statue of Liberty• Washington Monument• Gateway Arch

Mount Rushmore Mount Rushmore National Memorial, near

Keystone, South Dakota, is a monumental granite

sculpture by Gutzon Borglum (1867–1941), located

within the United States Presidential Memorial that

represents the first 150 years of the history of the

United States of America with 60-foot (18 m)

sculptures of the heads of former United States

presidents (left to right): George Washington

(1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826),

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham

Lincoln (1809–1865). The entire memorial covers

1,278.45 acres (5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet (1,745

m) above sea level. It is managed by the National

Park Service, a bureau of the United States

Department of the Interior. The memorial attracts

approximately two million people annually.

Lincoln Memorial The Lincoln Memorial is an American memorial built to

honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham

Lincoln. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

and was dedicated on May 30, 1922. The architect was Henry

Bacon, the sculptor of the main statue (Abraham Lincoln,

1920) was Daniel Chester French, and the painter of the

interior murals was Jules Guerin. It is one of several

monuments built to honor an American president.

The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple

and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham

Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by

Lincoln. The memorial has been the site of many

famous speeches, including Martin Luther King's "I

Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28, 1963

during the rally at the end of the March on Washington

for Jobs and Freedom.

Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty (French: Statue de la Liberté), officially

titled Liberty Enlightening the World (French: la Liberté

éclairant le monde), dedicated on October 28, 1886, is a

monument commemorating the centennial of the signing of

the United States Declaration of Independence, given to the

United States by the people of France to represent the

friendship between the two countries established during the

American Revolution. It represents a woman wearing a stola,

a radiant crown and sandals, trampling a broken chain,

carrying a torch in her raised right hand and a tabula ansata,

where the date of the Declaration of Independence is

inscribed, in her left arm. Standing on Liberty Island in New

York Harbor, it welcomes visitors, immigrants, and returning

Americans traveling by ship.

Washington Monument

The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in

Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George

Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world's

tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk, standing 555 feet 5⅛ inches (169.294

m). There are taller monumental columns, but they are neither all stone nor true obelisks. It

is also the tallest structure in Washington D.C.. It was designed by Robert Mills, an architect

of the 1840s. The actual construction of the monument began in 1848 but was not

completed until 1884, almost 30 years after the architect's death.

Gateway Arch The Gateway Arch, also known as the Gateway

to the West, is an integral part of the Jefferson

National Expansion Memorial and the iconic

image of St. Louis, Missouri. It was designed by

Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and

structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel in 1947. It

stands 630 feet (192 m) tall, and is 630 feet (192

m) wide at its base, making it the tallest

monument in the United States. Construction of

the arch started on February 12, 1963 and was

completed on October 28, 1965. The

monument opened to the public on July 10,

1967