Washington Monument at night, Washington, D.C., circa 1915

About this postcard

Night view of the Washington Monument rising above a line of trees, with a red-roofed building at the left and the obelisk reflected in the water below. The sky is dark and cloudy. The card's printed text recites the monument's familiar figures: begun in 1848, dedicated in 1885, 555 feet high, with memorial stones from states, foreign governments, and societies set into the interior walls. Construction in fact halted for more than two decades before the Civil War, and the three shades of marble in the shaft mark where work resumed. Finished in 1884, the obelisk was then the tallest structure in the world until the Eiffel Tower passed it in 1889. The caption's view from across the Potomac, the monument lit against the night sky, was a common subject for Washington publishers of the period.