The Washington Monument opened to the public on October 9, 1888, thirty-six years after the first stone was laid and four years after the last one was set. It stands 555 feet and 5 inches on the Mall in Washington and was, for a few months, the tallest structure in the world, until the Eiffel Tower passed it in 1889. Visitors rode a steam elevator to the top, or walked the 897 steps when the lift was down.
It had been a shambles for most of the years in between. Work started in 1848 to a design by Robert Mills, who wanted an obelisk rising from a circular colonnade, and the colonnade was never built. Money ran out in 1854. The shaft was about 150 feet high, and a block of marble given by Pope Pius IX was carried off one night by men who objected to a papal gift in a national monument and was never recovered. The stump stood open to the weather through the Civil War, and Congress had nothing to say about it.
What restarted it was the centennial. In 1876 Congress voted money to finish the job, and the Army Corps of Engineers took it over under Thomas Lincoln Casey, who tested the foundations, found them too shallow for the weight, and had them underpinned before anything else happened. Stone was lifted by steam hoist rather than by the old treadmill. Work resumed in 1879. The marble came from a different quarry, which is why the colour of the shaft changes at about the 150-foot mark in a line anyone can see from the ground.
The capstone, a small pyramid of aluminium weighing about 100 ounces, was set in December 1884. The metal was semi-precious then. The tip cost as much as a decent house. The monument has been shut for repairs several times since, including after the 2011 earthquake, and the elevator that carried visitors up in 1888 has been replaced more than once, but the stairs and the view from the windows at the top have not changed.