The Jefferson Memorial A Tale of Two Presidents

With its neo-classical design, the Jefferson Memorial on the Washington Mall appears to be of a much earlier era. The architecture was inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, while the bronze statue inside this memorial commemorates Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president (from 1801 until 1809) and one of the nation’s Founding Fathers. Jefferson was an architect in his own right, having designed his Monticello estate in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Inside the Jefferson Memorial, visitors can read Jefferson’s passages from the Declaration of Independence as well as the writings of some of Jefferson’s contemporaries. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a longtime admirer of Thomas Jefferson, and he was a strong proponent of building the memorial. Construction began in 1939 and was completed in 1942. Due to the rationing of metal during World War II, the Jefferson Memorial housed a plaster statue of Thomas Jefferson until a 19-foot tall bronze statue replaced it five years later. A much more modernist presidential memorial was dedicated to FDR in 1997.