Completion Of Washington's Monument, Commenced 36 Years Ago.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6. ─ The long expected completion of the Washington monument obelisk, was accompanied this afternoon by setting in place the marble capstone and its pyramidal apex of aluminum. The ceremonies were few and simple. An elaborate celebration of the event being reserved for Washington's birthday. Shortly after 2 o'clock, Col. Thos. L. Casey, government engineer in charge, and his assistants, Capt. Davis, U.S.A., and Bernard B. Green, civil engineer, together with master mechanic, McLaughlin, and several workmen, standing on a narrow platform built around the stepping of the marble roof, near the summit, proceeded to set the capstone. It weighs 3,300, and was suspended from a quadrupon of heavy joists, supported by the platform and towering forty feet above them. As soon as the capstone was set, the American flag was unfurled over head, and a salute of twenty-one guns, fired by a battery in the White House lot, far below. The sound of cheers also came up faintly from a crowd of spectators gathered around the base of the monument, while a number of invited guests were on the 500 feet of platform and in the interior of the monument at the level. Spontaneous they struck up the "Star Spangled Banner" and other patriotic American songs. A steady downpour of rain had given place a little while previously to a brisk gale of wind, at this elevation blowing at the rate of about 55 miles an hour, and very few of the invited guests cared to avail themselves of the privilege of climbing a nearly perpendicular ladder from the 500 foot platform to the dizzy height of 533 feet, from which three or four journalists and a half dozen other adventurers climbed and witnessed the setting of the cap stone, and subsequently ascended to the pinnacle. Meanwhile the Washington Monument society, represented by Dr. Joseph M. Toner, Hon. Horatio King, Gen. Wm. McKee Dunn, Daniel B. Clark and F. L. Harvey, secretary, held a meeting on the elevated platform, at the height of 500 feet and when the artillery firing announced the setting of the cap stone, they adopted a resolution offered by Gen. Dunn, congratulating the American people on the completion of this enduring monument of our nation's gratitude to the father of his country. Among those present to-day at the completion of the structure was one master mechanic who laid the corner stone of this monument more than 36 years ago, and the old watchman of the monument who had been continually employed in that capacity during nearly the whole intervening period. The flag over the monument floated to-day from the flagstaff top which is 600 feet from the ground, thus displaying the American colors at the greatest heighth on a construction ever yet known in the world.
