George Washington Masonic National Memorial
Near Dc Northern Virginia, Virginia
The tower visible on the hill above Alexandria was not built with public funds. American Freemasons financed it entirely on their own, dollar by dollar, refusing to borrow. Construction began in nineteen twenty-two and the tower was complete in nineteen thirty-two, though interior work continued until nineteen seventy. The design evokes the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt, standing three hundred thirty-three feet on Shuter's Hill.
Its cornerstone was dedicated on November first, nineteen twenty-three, before a crowd of Freemasons that included President Calvin Coolidge and former President William Howard Taft. Washington had been the master of the Alexandria-Washington Lodge since seventeen eighty-eight, and the memorial was conceived in nineteen ten after a lodge fire had destroyed irreplaceable Washington artifacts decades earlier. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in two thousand fifteen.
