TITANIC MEMORIALS

The Washington, DC area is home to several monuments and memorials to the victims of the Titanic disaster. Of these, the Women’s Titanic Memorial, now located at the foot of P Street, SW in Washington Channel Park, is probably the best known. Funds for the memorial were raised largely through individual one dollar donations from more than 25,000 women of America to honor those men who had lost their lives in the sinking. Although authorized by Congress in 1917 and completed in 1918, the monument was not erected until 1930, due to protracted delays in developing the preferred site in Rock Creek Park. Originally located along the Potomac River at the foot of New Hampshire Avenue, the monument was dismantled in January 1966 to make way for the new John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The memorial was stored briefly at Fort Washington, Maryland, before being re-erected at its current location.

The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain, located on The Ellipse across from the south lawn of the White House, was designed by renowned sculptor Daniel Chester French and erected through the contributions of their friends in 1913. The monument makes no reference to the Titanic disaster, and is often overlooked despite its prominent location. Major Archibald Butt served in the Spanish-American War and the Philippines before becoming military aide to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. He had been traveling in Europe with his close friend, Francis Davis Millet, a noted decorative artist whose works include murals in the U.S. Customs House in Baltimore, the Minnesota State Capitol, and the Federal Building and Cleveland Trust Company in Cleveland, Ohio. Millet also served as superintendent of decoration for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Both men lost their lives in the sinking, and though well known in Washington’s social and cultural circles at the time of their deaths, are relatively unknown to the public today.

There are two other memorials in the area that honor Major Butt – a bronze plaque located on the crypt level of Washington’s National Cathedral in what is now the Museum Store, and a stone monument erected by his family in Arlington National Cemetery.