Despite being an exceptionally cold and windy day, the Dedication saw a footfall of more than 800 people, which took place on the monument grounds.

 

“First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” President Chester Alan Arthur opened his dedicating speech with this line as he remembered the first American President and his service to his country.

 

 

As early as 1783, when Washington was very much alive, plans were in the works for erecting a large statue of the first president on horseback near the Capitol building. In fact, the architect of Washington, D.C., the French landscape engineer Charles Pierre L'Enfant, left an open place for the statue in his drawings. And that's almost exactly where the Washington Monument sits