History & Culture

The Memorial

Dedicated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 13, 1943, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial stands in a straight line with the White House. Architect John Russell Pope, influenced by Jefferson's taste in classical architecture, echoed the style seen in Jefferson's two most famous buildings - Monticello and the University of Virginia Rotunda.

The Man

Founding Father... Revolutionary... Renaissance Man. Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, first Secretary of State for the United States of America, and a complex, 19th-century man with a wide ranging impact on the very makeup of America itself.