The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was dedicated on the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. King's college fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha originally proposed a memorial to…

The Vietnam Women's Memorial opened in 1993 as the first monument on the National Mall dedicated to women's military service. The memorial project began in 1984 to honor more than 7,500 American women Vietnam veterans. The memorial features 3…

The Three Soldiers statue sits a few feet from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. This statue was added after the Wall opened to complement it and to offer an alternative memorial for critics who disliked the non-traditional design of the Wall. The…

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall opened in 1982 to honor more than 58,000 American casualties lost in the Vietnam War. Two black walls form a wide V that list the names of each person missing or dead in chronological order. Diamonds appear beside…

On July 27, 1995, the presidents of the United States and the Republic of Korea dedicated the Korean War Veterans Memorial on the 42nd anniversary of the war's end. The memorial consists of an open triangle filled with 19 stainless-steel figures…

The National World War II Memorial opened in 2004 to honor American soldiers and civilians who served during World War II. Supporters spent over 15 years gathering Congressional support and raising money to fund the construction of this memorial. To…

Dedicated by President Herbert Hoover in 1931, the District of Columbia War Memorial honors the residents who served and died in World War I. Inscribed on the floor of the domed monument are the names of the 499 DC residents who perished in that…

Constructed between 1914 and 1922, the Lincoln Memorial consists of a large, columned, classically inspired structure with a statue of Lincoln in the interior. Inscribed on the interior walls are Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg…

The Jefferson Memorial features a classically-inspired dome surrounded by columns. The centerpiece of the memorial is a 19 foot bronze statue of Jefferson. The statue was the second one of Jefferson placed in the Memorial, replacing a work made of…

This is the second memorial to Roosevelt in the city; the first is near the National Archives and matches Roosevelt's own statement about what a memorial to him should look like: a block of stone about the size of a desk. However, in the 1970s,…