Stone Sentinels: The Bennington and Bunker Hill Monuments
Two Obelisks and the New England Memory of Revolution
Two stone obelisks stand sentinel over New England, each rising hundreds of feet above the landscape to commemorate Revolutionary War victories. The Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Massachusetts, completed in 1843, marks the site of one of the war’s earliest and bloodiest battles. The Bennington Battle Monument in Old Bennington, Vermont, dedicated in 1891, commemorates a crucial American victory that helped turn the tide of the conflict. Separated by geography and nearly half a century of construction, these monuments share a common purpose and architectural vocabulary, yet they reveal divergent approaches to memorial building and the evolving relationship between historical memory and civic identity in nineteenth-century New England.
Both monuments are obelisks, that ancient Egyptian form that became the preferred language of monumental commemoration in nineteenth-century America. Both required decades of planning, fundraising, and construction. One stands on an actual Revolutionary battle site and the other at a site with a connection to its namesake battle, transforming ordinary New England hillsides into sacred ground. Yet examining these structures closely reveals how memorial architecture changed between the 1840s and 1890s, how different communities approached the challenge of commemoration, and how stone could be made to speak of sacrifice, victory, and national identity.
The Bunker Hill Monument: First of Its Kind
The Bunker Hill Monument holds the distinction of being the first public obelisk erected in the United States, pioneering a form that would dominate American memorial architecture for generations. The battle it commemorates, fought on June 17, 1775, on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown (despite its misleading name), was among the earliest major engagements of the Revolutionary War. British forces under General William Howe assaulted hastily constructed American fortifications, suffering devastating casualties in two frontal attacks before finally overwhelming the defenders when their ammunition ran out. Although technically a British tactical victory, the battle demonstrated that colonial forces could stand against professional British soldiers, providing a crucial morale boost to the American cause.
The path from battle to monument was long. In 1794, King Solomon’s Lodge of Freemasons erected an eighteen-foot wooden pillar topped with a gilt urn in memory of Dr. Joseph Warren, the Massachusetts political leader and Masonic brother who fell during the battle. This modest memorial stood for nearly thirty years, but as the Revolutionary generation aged and national consciousness grew, sentiment emerged for something more permanent and impressive. In 1823, a group of prominent Boston citizens including Daniel Webster, William Tudor, and George Ticknor formed the Bunker Hill Monument Association, each subscribing five dollars to begin raising funds.
The Association’s vision was explicitly monumental. They sought what one member described as “a simple, majestic, lofty, and permanent monument, which shall carry down to remote ages a testimony to the heroic virtue and courage of those men who began and achieved the independence of their country.” To protect the battlefield from encroaching development as Charlestown’s population grew, the Association purchased fifteen acres on Breed’s Hill. Initially, they authorized Solomon Willard, a skilled stoneworker and builder, to design a 221-foot column. But the committee reconsidered, opening a design competition in 1825 that attracted fifty entries.
Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument submitted both a column design and an obelisk, expressing preference for the latter due to its superior strength and permanence. The committee ultimately selected an obelisk design, though accounts differ on whether it was Mills’s design or a modification by Willard. What matters is that the obelisk form, with its Egyptian associations of timelessness and its geometric simplicity, was chosen to embody Revolutionary memory.
The cornerstone was laid on June 17, 1825, exactly fifty years after the battle, in a ceremony that captured national attention. The Marquis de Lafayette, on his triumphal tour of the United States, performed the honors before a crowd that included President John Quincy Adams, former President James Monroe, and more than two hundred surviving Revolutionary War veterans. Daniel Webster delivered an oration that became famous for its evocation of the Revolutionary generation’s passing: “Venerable men! You have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day.”
Construction began in earnest in 1827, but the project faced immediate and persistent financial challenges. The granite, quarried in Quincy, Massachusetts, had to be transported to the site via an ingenious solution: the Granite Railway, America’s first commercial railroad, built specifically to haul the massive blocks. From the quarry, granite traveled by horse-drawn rail cars to the Neponset River, then by barge to Charlestown. Each of the approximately 3,000 blocks had to be cut, transported, and fitted into place using pulleys, rollers, oxen, and lead and iron clamps. The monument consumed roughly 6,700 tons of granite.
By 1829, funds had dried up and construction halted. The Association sold off most of its fifteen acres, retaining only the summit area, but still lacked money to continue. For over a decade, the partially completed monument stood as an embarrassment, with some disgruntled neighbors rumored to be raising funds to tear it down. Salvation came from an unexpected quarter. In 1840, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, organized the Bunker Hill Monument Fair, a five-day event at Faneuil Hall Market. Women from across New England and the eastern seaboard donated needlework, art, food, and household goods for sale. The fair raised over $30,000, covering a quarter of the remaining construction costs and demonstrating women’s increasing role in preserving historical memory.
With renewed funding from both public and private sources, including substantial gifts from philanthropists Amos Lawrence and Judah Touro, construction resumed. The capstone was finally installed on July 23, 1842, accompanied by a twenty-six-gun salute honoring the states of the Union. The monument was dedicated on June 17, 1843, with Daniel Webster again delivering the oration to a crowd estimated at over 100,000. At least thirteen surviving veterans of the battle attended, witnessing the completion of what had become the tallest structure in the country.
The completed monument stands 221 feet tall, a tapering granite obelisk rising from a square base. Inside, a spiral staircase of 294 steps winds to a small observation chamber offering panoramic views of Charlestown, Boston, and the surrounding area. The monument sits at the center of a four-acre square, subdivided into quadrants by walkways and enclosed by a cast iron fence and trees. At its base stands a statue of Colonel William Prescott, credited with the famous command “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” erected in 1881 by sculptor William Wetmore Story.
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The Bennington Battle Monument: Vermont’s Tower
Nearly half a century after Bunker Hill’s completion, Vermont erected its own monument to Revolutionary triumph. The Battle of Bennington, fought August 16, 1777, came at a critical moment in the war’s northern campaign. British General John Burgoyne, advancing south from Canada, desperately needed supplies and horses for his army. Learning of a Continental storehouse in Bennington, he dispatched a detachment under Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum to seize it. General John Stark, commanding New Hampshire militia reinforced by Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys under Seth Warner and Massachusetts volunteers, caught the British force at Walloomsac, New York, about ten miles west of Bennington. In a fierce engagement, American forces decimated Baum’s detachment and later defeated British reinforcements under Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich von Breymann. The twin victories deprived Burgoyne of crucial supplies and manpower, contributing to his eventual surrender at Saratoga two months later.
Unlike Bunker Hill, where memorial efforts began relatively soon after the battle, Bennington’s monument faced a longer gestation. The Vermont Legislature established a commemoration association as early as 1854, but financial difficulties forced its dissolution after two years. Not until 1876, energized by the national centennial celebrations and with Vermont’s own centennial approaching in 1891, did the Bennington Battle Monument Association gain serious momentum. Former Governor Hiland Hall championed the project, insisting on a grand scale that would not “dwindle into an obscure art gallery.” The Legislature appropriated $15,000; New Hampshire added $5,000; Massachusetts contributed $10,000; the U.S. Congress authorized $40,000; and private contributions brought the total to approximately $102,000.
In 1886, the Legislature authorized an additional $10,000 to purchase the property where the monument would stand, the site of the original Continental storehouse that had been Burgoyne’s objective. Debate raged over whether to create a sculptural or architectural monument. After reviewing various proposals, the committee selected a design by John Philipp Rinn, a Boston architect. The contractor was William Ward of Lowell, Massachusetts, interestingly the same contractor who had completed Bunker Hill. The cornerstone was laid in 1887, and the monument was completed and dedicated in 1891, timed to coincide with Vermont’s centennial.
The Bennington Battle Monument rises 306 feet, 4½ inches, substantially taller than Bunker Hill and the tallest structure in Vermont. Its height makes it the second-tallest unreinforced masonry building in the United States, surpassed only by the Washington Monument. The monument is constructed of Sandy Hill dolomite, a blue-gray magnesian limestone quarried in Kingsbury, New York (near present-day Hudson Falls), and weighs approximately nineteen million pounds. The exterior stone is rock-faced except for two smooth horizontal bands near the observatory level, giving the monument a more textured, rugged appearance than Bunker Hill’s smoother surfaces.
The structure tapers gradually from a 37-foot square base, rising 168 feet before transitioning from rough-faced to smooth stone at a horizontal belt course. The diminishing curve continues upward another 100 feet to the three-tier cap with its pyramidal top. This gradual transition creates what architectural historian Glenn Andres describes as an “almost entasis-like” quality, a subtle swelling that gives the monument a “robust physical expressiveness” distinct from more sharply geometric obelisks.
J. Philipp Rinn designed not only the exterior but also the interior staircase, a 417-step spiral with unusually wide, sloping treads and low risers that makes for a gradual climb despite the monument’s height. Unlike Bunker Hill’s narrow, steepening spiral, Bennington’s staircase maintains comfortable proportions throughout, reflecting late nineteenth-century advances in engineering and accessibility. An elevator was installed to carry visitors to the observation level, which provides spectacular open views across Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts.
The dedication ceremony on August 18, 1891, drew President Benjamin Harrison, whose presence linked Vermont’s statehood centennial with national commemoration. Crowds estimated at 30,000 to 40,000 gathered in Old Bennington, transforming the village into a temporary capital of Revolutionary memory. The monument stood, as one contemporary account noted, at the head of Monument Avenue, creating a dramatic visual axis through what had been the village’s main street. The site’s topography, with the monument crowning a hill visible for miles, gave the structure extraordinary visual impact across the rural landscape.
Architectural Comparison
Both monuments employ the obelisk form, but they interpret it differently, reflecting both technological changes and shifting aesthetic preferences. The Bunker Hill Monument, completed in 1843, represents early nineteenth-century commemorative architecture. Its clean geometric lines, relatively smooth stone surfaces, and sharp edges recall classical prototypes. The monument’s proportions follow traditional obelisk ratios, though scaled to unprecedented height for American construction. Willard’s design emphasizes purity of form, with minimal surface decoration beyond the stone’s natural texture. The effect is one of severe monumentality, appropriate to its role as the nation’s first great battle memorial.
The Bennington Monument, completed in 1891, shows Victorian elaboration of the basic form. The rough-faced stone, broken only by horizontal bands, creates strong surface texture and shadow patterns that change with the light. The gradual entasis adds subtle dynamism to what might otherwise be an inert geometric form. The three-tier cap is more elaborate than Bunker Hill’s simple pyramidal top, suggesting late nineteenth-century willingness to complicate classical forms. The taller, more attenuated proportions reflect both engineering advances that made such heights feasible and Victorian taste for dramatic scale.
Construction techniques also differed significantly. Bunker Hill required the Granite Railway, America’s first commercial railroad, demonstrating how the monument spurred technological innovation. The granite blocks, each weighing several tons, had to be moved by combinations of rail, barge, oxen, and human muscle power. Assembly required elaborate systems of pulleys, rollers, and improvised cranes. The construction process itself became a demonstration of American ingenuity and determination, the monument rising through accumulated small advances rather than any single breakthrough.
Bennington, built half a century later, benefited from mature industrial infrastructure. Railroads could deliver materials directly to the site. Steam-powered machinery facilitated cutting and moving stone. Engineering knowledge accumulated from decades of building had made large-scale masonry construction routine rather than experimental. The monument’s greater height was achievable precisely because the technical challenges Bunker Hill’s builders struggled with had become solved problems. Where Bunker Hill demonstrated what was barely possible, Bennington showed what had become standard practice.
Commemoration and Meaning
The monuments’ different contexts shaped their meanings. Bunker Hill was built when Revolutionary memory was living memory, when hundreds of veterans could still attend dedication ceremonies and speak firsthand of the events commemorated. The monument arose from direct connection to the Revolutionary generation, a conscious attempt to preserve something felt to be slipping away. Webster’s 1825 oration makes this urgency explicit, addressing the veterans as links to a vanishing past who must pass the torch to new generations. The monument literalizes this transfer, making permanent in stone what was ephemeral in human memory.
By 1891, when Bennington was dedicated, no Revolutionary veterans survived. The war had passed entirely from living memory into history, mediated by books, stories, and monuments rather than direct testimony. Vermont’s monument represents a second-generation relationship to the Revolution, commemoration by those who knew the events only through their grandparents’ accounts. This temporal distance allowed different emphases. Where Bunker Hill stressed the veterans’ direct experience and sacrifice, Bennington could celebrate Vermont’s statehood alongside Revolutionary victory, linking founding mythology to contemporary state identity.
The monuments also reveal different regional identities. Bunker Hill, in Massachusetts, commemorates a battle that, despite tactical defeat, became a symbol of American determination and British pyrrhic victory. Massachusetts could claim central importance to the Revolution, with Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and Boston itself all sites of crucial early events. The monument thus reinforces Massachusetts’s identity as the “Cradle of Liberty,” birthplace of American independence.
Bennington, conversely, commemorates an unambiguous American victory in a state that was not yet a state when the battle occurred. Vermont existed as an independent republic from 1777 to 1791, neither British colony nor American state. The monument therefore serves complex purposes: validating Vermont’s Revolutionary credentials, asserting its place in national founding mythology despite its anomalous status during the war, and celebrating the Green Mountain Boys as Vermont’s distinctive contribution to the struggle. The monument simultaneously makes Vermont part of the national story and asserts Vermont’s particular identity within that larger narrative.
The Obelisk as American Form
Why obelisks? The form originated in ancient Egypt, where it symbolized the sun god Ra and served as monuments to pharaohs. Romans imported Egyptian obelisks and created their own imitations. Renaissance popes re-erected ancient obelisks in Rome, Christianizing them by adding crosses to their tops. By the eighteenth century, obelisks appeared in European memorial landscapes, and by the early nineteenth century, the form had become internationally recognized as appropriate for significant commemoration.
For early American republic, the obelisk offered several advantages. Its associations with ancient Egypt suggested timelessness and permanence, qualities Americans sought for their new nation’s founding moments. Its simple geometric form could be executed without elaborate sculptural programs, reducing cost and avoiding theological or political controversies that figurative monuments might provoke. Its vertical emphasis made it visible from great distances, marking sacred sites in the landscape. And its classical pedigree provided cultural legitimacy for a nation anxious about its place in Western civilization.
Robert Mills, who influenced both monuments’ designs, articulated these advantages explicitly. The obelisk’s strength, he argued, made it superior to columnar forms for large-scale monuments. Its simplicity ensured it would not become dated as fashions changed. Its abstract quality allowed it to commemorate events rather than individuals, making it appropriate for memorials to collective sacrifice. These arguments proved persuasive, and the obelisk became the default American monument form, culminating in the Washington Monument (1884), which at 555 feet dwarfed all predecessors.
Yet the obelisk form also reveals American anxieties. Unlike Greek temples or Gothic cathedrals, which American builders also appropriated, the obelisk had no functional interior. It was pure monument, serving no purpose except to be seen and to house the staircase visitors could climb. This pure monumentality troubled some critics, who preferred structures that combined commemorative function with practical use. But for Revolutionary memorials, this very uselessness became appropriate. The monuments did nothing but remember, their stone bulk a permanent reminder of events that should never be forgotten.
Access and Experience
Both monuments invite ascent, transforming visitors into pilgrims who must physically labor to reach the summit and its views. The Bunker Hill climb, 294 steps up a narrowing spiral staircase with no rest points, tests endurance. The stairs grow steeper and tighter as one ascends, the granite walls pressing closer, the air growing warmer and closer. By two-thirds up, many visitors find themselves “lead-footed,” as one observer noted, struggling to complete what seemed manageable at the start. The physical challenge becomes part of the experience, a minor echo of the battle’s larger sacrifices.
The reward is a small observation chamber with narrow windows offering 360-degree views of Charlestown, Boston, Cambridge, and the harbor. From this height, one sees the landscape as the defending Americans could not have seen it during battle, gaining perspective impossible from ground level. The city spreads below, modern development erasing most traces of the 1775 landscape, yet the topography remains, the relationship between Breed’s Hill and Boston Harbor still visible. The monument thus provides both commemoration and orientation, teaching visitors to read landscape as historical text.
Bennington’s 417 steps, with their wide treads and low risers, make for an easier climb despite the greater height. The staircase maintains comfortable proportions throughout, and an elevator offers alternative access for those unable or unwilling to climb. This accessibility reflects both later construction date and Vermont’s democratic ethos, ensuring that the monument’s views and meanings are available to all visitors regardless of physical capability.
From Bennington’s observation level, the view encompasses three states, a fitting prospect for a battle that drew forces from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The rural landscape, remarkably preserved in Old Bennington, allows visitors to imagine the 1777 setting more easily than Bunker Hill’s urban surroundings permit. The monument’s height makes it visible for miles across Vermont’s valleys and New York’s farm country, a constant reminder of the battle’s importance to regional identity.
Preservation and Present
Both monuments now face preservation challenges that their builders could not have anticipated. The Bunker Hill Monument, transferred to the National Park Service in 1976 as part of Boston National Historical Park, underwent a $3.7 million renovation in 2007 that included structural repairs, handicap accessibility improvements, and new lighting. As a National Historic Landmark since 1961 and part of the Freedom Trail, it receives hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, the crowds themselves creating preservation concerns.
The Bennington Battle Monument, operated by the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation since 1953, faces more serious structural issues. Water saturation in the monument’s stone has caused deterioration, with estimated restoration costs reaching $40 million as of 2025. The dolomite, while beautiful, is more porous than Bunker Hill’s granite, making it vulnerable to freeze-thaw cycles and moisture damage. Vermont’s harsh winters compound the problem. Preservation efforts continue, but the monument’s future depends on securing substantial funding for work that must be done carefully to preserve the structure’s integrity and appearance.
These preservation challenges reflect a larger truth about monuments: they require ongoing care. Stone may be permanent compared to wood or flesh, but it is not eternal. The monuments their builders intended to “carry down to remote ages” survive only through continued investment, maintenance, and public commitment to their preservation. In this sense, the monuments’ meaning has evolved. They commemorate not only Revolutionary battles but also subsequent generations’ determination to maintain those memories, to continue the conversation between past and present that monuments enable.
Conclusion
The Bennington and Bunker Hill monuments stand as twin expressions of New England’s Revolutionary memory, stone obelisks marking sites where the struggle for independence was fought and won. They share architectural vocabulary, commemorative purpose, and construction challenges that required decades to overcome. Yet they also reveal differences: in scale, texture, and decoration; in the temporal distance between battle and monument; in the specific regional identities they construct and maintain; in accessibility and technological sophistication.
Visiting both monuments provides remarkable perspective on how nineteenth-century Americans understood their Revolutionary heritage and how they chose to make that heritage visible and permanent. The obelisk form, borrowed from ancient Egypt via European prototypes, became distinctively American through repetition and association. These monuments taught Americans to recognize obelisks as markers of sacred national ground, a visual vocabulary that would shape commemorative architecture for generations.
They also remind us that historical memory requires work. Neither monument appeared spontaneously or inevitably. Each resulted from decades of planning, fundraising, political negotiation, and physical construction. Each represents countless individual decisions about design, materials, funding, and meaning. Each continues to demand preservation resources, public access, interpretation, and care. The monuments stand not through their own massive strength alone but through ongoing human commitment to the memories they embody.
Today, as both monuments require expensive preservation work, they raise questions about how we maintain connections to the past in an era when Revolutionary memory has become abstract, when few Americans can name the battles these monuments commemorate or explain their significance. Yet the monuments persist, visible from miles away, inviting ascent, offering views that connect present landscape to past events. They remain what their builders intended: permanent markers of impermanent events, stone reminders that the present rests on foundations laid by previous generations, towering testimonies to sacrifice and victory that continue to shape the New England landscape and the American historical imagination.
Until our next exploration, I remain your faithful correspondent,
The New England Scholar
From the Scholar’s Study
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