Washington Monument To Get Fix-Up Work To Repair Cracks Will Last Until 2000

People queued up around the Washington Monument, the capital’s centerpiece, for a last chance to go up the tallest structure in the city before its marble blocks are wrapped in scaffolding and its doors closed for repair.

The make-over of the 110-year-old landmark begins Monday and will last until Independence Day 2000. But it will be closed to visitors only until late spring this year while a new elevator and heating, cooling and ventilation systems are installed. Visitors will not hamper other interior work or exterior repairs.

Cracks in the 555-foot obelisk will be patched and sealed, damaged stones repaired and the interior cleaned in the $8 million project.

“I feel very lucky I’ll be able to see it,” said Cindy Engel, on her first visit to the monument, as she waited in line Saturday for a ticket to the top.

Erin Broadbent, site manager of the National Mall, said the new repairs will make the monument more enjoyable for visitors because technicians will be able to regulate temperatures at the observation level, and the elevator - installed in 1959 - won’t go “through its fits” so often as it does now.

‘People should be much more comfortable throughout the year,” Broadbent said.

The repair work, the monument’s most extensive overhaul since it opened in 1888, will be done in three phases. Minneapolis-based Target discount stores has raised $5 million in a private corporate effort for the exterior work.

General Electric is developing a lighting system for nighttime illumination of scaffolding designed by architect Michael Graves. To be erected next June, the scaffolding and a transparent covering are designed to blend with the monument’s exterior while allowing observers to see the memorial beneath the steel network.

The project involves sealing 500 feet of exterior and interior stone cracks, repairing 64,000 feet of exterior joints and 3,900 feet of interior joints, cleaning 59,000 square feet of interior walls, sealing the eight observation windows and eight red aircraft warning lights, repairing 1,000 square feet of chipped and patched stone and preserving and restoring 192 interior commemorative stones.

The deadline for completion: July 4, 2000.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SEE IT A digital image of the design concept for the scaffolding of the monument can be seen at www.nps.gov/wamo/monument/monument.htm