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  • This house has served as residence, office, reception site, and world embassy for every U.S. president since John Adams. The White House is the only private residence of a head of state that has opened its doors to the public for tours, free of charge. It was Thomas Jefferson who started this practice, which is stopped only during wartime.<br />
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An Act of Congress in 1790 established the city, now known as Washington, District of Columbia, as the seat of the federal government. George Washington and city planner Pierre L'Enfant chose the site for the President's House and staged a contest to find a builder. Although Washington picked the winner -- Irishman James Hoban -- he was the only president never to live in the White House. The structure took 8 years to build, starting in 1792, when its cornerstone was laid. Its facade is made of the same stone that was used to construct the Capitol. The mansion quickly became known as the "White House," thanks to the limestone whitewashing applied to the walls to protect them, later replaced by white lead paint in 1818. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the British set fire to the White House, gutting the interior; the exterior managed to endure only because a rainstorm extinguished the fire. What you see today is Hoban's basic creation: a building modeled after an Irish country house (in fact, Hoban had in mind the house of the Duke of Leinster in Dublin).
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  • The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial sits at the base of Capitol Hill amidst other important Washington D.C. monuments such as those built to honor Lincoln and Washington. It is currently the largest equestrian statue in the United States and the second largest in the world.<br />
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The initiative to build the statue began in the late 1800s, and by 1902, it was officially commissioned by Congress. The design was created by sculptor Henry Merwin Shrady and architect William Pearce Casey. Sculptor Edmond Amateis also assisted Shrady in the effort in the later years of construction. (Shrady died in 1922, two weeks before the memorial was dedicated.)<br />
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The Memorial<br />
The platform for the memorial measures 252 feet (77 m) long and 71 feet (22 m) wide and is divided into three sections, all made of beautiful Vermont marble. On the tall center section sits a 10,700 pound (4800 kg), 17-foot-2-inch (5.2 m) statue of Grant aboard his horse, Cincinnati. Union artillery and cavalry groups sit upon the lower pedestals on either side of General Grant. Four shorter pedestals surround the main pedestals. Upon those platforms sit lions in repose, guarding the U.S. and Army flags.<br />
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The marble bases and the four lions were constructed first in 1909. Within the next seven years, the Cavalry and Artillery groupings were added. Finally, the general’s statue took its place in 1920. Sculptor Sherry Fry completed the panels below the statue after Shrady passed away. The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial was dedicated on the anniversary of Grant’s birthday, April 27, 1922
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  • The Washington Monument is a large white-colored obelisk at the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is a United States Presidential Memorial constructed for George Washington, the first president of the United States and the leader of the revolutionary Continental Army that won independence from the British after the American Revolutionary War.<br />
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The monument is made of marble, granite, and sandstone. It was designed by Robert Mills, a prominent American architect of the 1840s. The actual construction of the monument began in 1848, but was not completed until 1884, almost 30 years after the architect's death. This hiatus in construction was due to lack of funds and the intervention of the American Civil War. A difference in shading of the marble (visible approximately 45 m/150 feet up) clearly delineates the initial construction from its resumption in 1876.<br />
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Its cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1848; the capstone was set on December 6, 1884; and the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885. It officially opened to the public on October 9, 1888. Upon completion, it became the world's tallest structure at 169 m, a title it inherited from the Cologne Cathedral and held until 1889, when the Eiffel Tower was finished in Paris, France.<br />
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The Washington Monument's reflection can be seen in the aptly named Reflecting Pool, a rectangular reflecting pool extending to the west, towards the Lincoln Memorial.
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