Baltimore's Washington Monument is expected to remain off limits to the public for a minimum of three months, as city consultants address safety concerns that prompted the landmark to be closed last week and how to fix them.
Cathy Powell, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of General Services, said the city has asked a local engineering firm, Whitney Bailey Cox & Magnani, to inspect the 178-foot-tall monument and advise city officials about the actions needed to make it safe to reopen to the public and the estimated cost.
Powell said the city's goal was is to stabilize and reopen the landmark in time for the annual Lighting of the Monument ceremony, which is traditionally held on the first Thursday of December.
"We think it will take three to six months," Powell said this week. Until the repairs are completed, "the public is not going to be able to get in there. … We want to make sure everything is safe for the public."
The monument was closed Friday after the city received a privately funded engineers' report that recommended that visitors not be allowed to venture onto the balcony at the top of the monument until repairs are made to the stonework there. According to the report, by CVM Engineering of Philadelphia, mortar between the marble slabs is missing and metal support brackets are exposed and rusting, a sign that they should be replaced.
Built from 1815 to 1829, the landmark is the first civic monument to the nation's first president. This is the first time it has been off limits to the public since a previous renovation was completed in 1992. The monument was closed from 1985 to 1992.
The CVM report was paid for by the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy, a private group that is seeking to raise $12 million to $15 million to make improvements to the monument and the surrounding four public squares that the financially strapped city cannot afford to make.
This spring the conservancy has launched a restoration campaign for Mount Vernon Place that enables the public to make tax-deductible contributions to help repair the Washington Monument and other features of the park.
The conservancy also has applied to the National Park Service for a "Save America's Treasures" grant of $700,000 to help restore the monument and other features of Mount Vernon Place. The federal funds must be matched with other donations before they can be drawn down.
Powell said that because the city did not commission the CVM report directly, city officials wanted to bring in their own engineers to assess the monument's condition and determine how to repair it. She said the city has an "on-call" arrangement with WBCM to provide engineering services for publicly owned buildings and will use its findings to develop a plan for stabilizing the landmark. She said the city will not have a cost estimate for repairing the monument until WBCM completes its assessment.
The engineering firm hired by the conservancy, CVM, completed its inspection last fall and estimated that repairs to the top of the monument could cost $50,000 to $100,000, plus $200,000 to erect scaffolding. The total cost of all monument repairs recommended by CVM, including repointing the entire shaft, is about $1 million.