From the earliest times, humans have been builders. In part, this has been a celebration of a hard-won ascendancy over nature, but it has also been due to the need to express a deep-felt spiritual or emotional commitment, often inspired by a site’s beauty or its character. Such buildings have an inherent appeal that is as potent today as when they were erected centuries ago.
Here are the five monumental wonders in the U.S.A.:
1. Chaco Cultural/National Historical Park. In a remote corner of New Mexico, 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Albuquerque, there is a desert canyon that contains 13 major pre-Columbian native American ruins. Because of its importance as the cultural center of the southwest Anasazi Indians from 950 to 1300, Chaco Canyon has gained international status. There is a 400-mile (640-kilometer) network of roads linking more than 100 pueblos. One of the largest and most extensively excavated of these is Pueblo Bonito, a vast building, five stories high in places, which had 500 rooms and would have housed 1,000 people. Artefacts that demonstrate the Anasazi’s skill in agriculture, weaving, pottery, masonry, and tool making have also been found.
2. Monticello. A Federal-style home in Virginia, Monticello is a landmark of American architectural and domestic mechanical innovation. Begun by Thomas Jefferson in 1770, it took some 40 years to complete and combined aspects of a classical Roman villa with modern English and French design. The entrance hall served as a private museum of the natural sciences. The seven-day calendar clock which Jefferson designed still hangs above the door. He cut a hole in the floor to permit the rise and fall of the weights, which indicates the day of the week against marks on the wall. The doors to the parlor also show his love of all things mechanical: when one is pushed, the other opens too, propelled by a connecting loop of chain under the floor.
3. Mount Rushmore. On the north-eastern side of Mount Rushmore (6,375 feet/1,943 meters) in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the heads of four American presidents have been carved 60 feet (18 meters) high into the granite. The mountain is a national memorial, for each president represents an aspect of the country’s ideology: George Washington, the founding of the nation; Thomas Jefferson, political philosophy; Abraham Lincoln, preservation; and Theodore Roosevelt, expansion and conservation. The carvings were executed in 1927-1941 under the direction of the American sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
4. Mount Vernon. The home and burial place of George Washington (1732-1799), Mount Vernon and its 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) of landscaped grounds overlooking the Potomac river in Virginia have remained largely intact since the president’s death. The splendid mansion, still with many original furnishings, provides a fascinating insight into the aristocratic life of the founding fathers of the U.S.A. The main block of the building was begun in 1754. It has 19 rooms, the most interesting of which are the library and the bedroom, which still houses the four-poster bed in which Washington died.
5. Statue of Liberty. France presented the Statue of Liberty to the United States as a token of friendship marking the centenary of US independence. It stands on Liberty Island in New York harbor and was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland on October 28, 1886. The idea for the statue – 305 feet (93 meters) from the base to the tip of the torch – was conceived by the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye after the American Civil War. The sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, directed its construction, which consisted of hammering copper sheets by hand and assembling them over a framework of four huge steel supports. The statue was dismantled and reassembled in New York. It was declared a national monument in 1924.
Countless structures have been raised by human architects and builders from the time our remote ancestors first leaned two branches together to make a shelter, and of these many thousands have survived. Some are not mere aggregations of stone but are structures and sites imbued with a special sense of mystery or significance. Every country in the world surely prides itself with its very own monumental wonders.