Jefferson Memorial
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had enough on his plate when he entered office; he was repairing a ruptured economy and later led a country into war. Yet at the same time, he was able to memorialize one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. On November 15, 1938, FDR laid the cornerstone to the Jefferson Memorial. The 19-foot-tall bronze statue of our third president stands under the memorial’s marble dome, on the banks of the Potomac River Tidal Basin.