• Below you'll find The Mall stock photos featuring unique and versatile images of the Washington Monument, America's national monument honouring George Washington.

• Highlighted by photographs from the circular plaza of the national monument at ground level including the fifty American flagpoles which encircle the iconic obelisk including beautiful sunrise and sunset views.

• Please take a look at Liberty Photo Art's photograph gallery below.

• If you would like to see more of the Mall stock photos at full-size and resolution and or/are interested in purchasing a photograph/s please visit Liberty Photo Art's photography portfolio on Adobe Stock by clicking on the link provided: Liberty Photo Art Adobe Stock Portfolio

Please visit Liberty Photo Art's photography portfolio on Adobe Stock if you would like to see more of the Mall stock photos by clicking on the link provided below :

Liberty Photo Art Adobe Stock Portfolio

Please take a look at Liberty Photo art's other internal photo galleries featuring the Mall stock photos by visting one of the sub-pages below :

• Aerial views from the Washington Monument
• Washington Monument
• National World War Two Memorial
• Views of the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial

A brief history of how the Washington Monument was constructed to go alongside Liberty Photo Art's the Mall stock photos

• The Washington Monument honours the nation's first president, George Washington.

• The national monument was designed by Robert Mills whose original design called for a 600-foot Egyptian styled obelisk which would have thirty 100-foot columns encircling the base.

• During the construction of the monument there were a number of complications and the design had to be scaled back between the two building phases because of a lack of funding.

• The original architect Robert Mills died in 1855 and never saw the completion of his design.

• Lt. Col. Thomas Lincoln Casey & the U.S Army Corps of Engineers were chosen to resume the construction and complete the monument.

• Time pressure & lack of funds meant that the design had to be scaled back, the height was changed from the original 600-feet to the optimum height of 555-feet, to accommodate for ten times the width of the base and the ring of columns were scrapped.

The Washington Monument had two distinct phases of construction.

First Phase;

• Construction began in 1848 despite great difficulties in raising the necessary funds, by 1854 the monument had reached a height of 156-feet above ground, but as donors funds to the Washington National Monument Society came to a halt so did the building of the national monument, stopping completely in 1858.

• President Ulysses S. Grant, in 1876, in a joint resolution approved an act authorising the government to finish the project.

• The monument stood only partially finished for over two decades until 1878, when Lt. Col. Thomas Casey & the U.S Army Corps of Engineers assumed control of the completing the monument, which simplified the original design of Robert Mills.

Second Phase;

• Before construction could begin again the masons needed a supply of stone, unfortunately the stone that was quarried from nearby Baltimore for the first phase was no longer available. A suitable match to the original stone was difficult to find but builders settled on a stone quarried in Massachusetts, but problems became evident with the quality & colour of the stone soon after.

• After the addition of several courses of the stone from Massachusetts which left behind a brown-streak of beltline a third of the way up the monument, the builders turned their attention to a third quarry in Baltimore that proved more reliable, and that was the stone used for the last two-thirds of the structure.

• The stone never quite matched the original, leaving three slightly different bands of colour which is still distinguistable today.

• To crown the monument a 3,300-pound marble capstone was placed on the obelisk and topped with a 9-inch pyramid of cast aluminium.

• The monument was finally dedicated on February 21st, 1885.