Bunker Hill Monument

Charlestown

Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown

QUICK FACTS

Marquis de Lafayette, visiting the U.S. in 1824, helps lay the cornerstone to the Monument.

LINKS

LOCATION

With groundbreaking on 17 June 1825, fifty years after the event, an obelisk commemorates the Battle of Bunker Hill and the fallen militia General, Dr. Joseph Warren. A statue of Colonel William Prescott, one of the battle leaders, stands in front.

Located across the street from the monument is the Battle of Bunker Hill Museum. It includes dioramas, murals, and artifacts, including a masonic apron belonging to Dr. Warren and the trowel used by Marquis de Lafayette for the groundbreaking.

Part of the Freedom Trail™.

Associated People

Gage, Thomas

Howe, William

Lafayette, Marquis de

Prescott, William

Putnam, Israel

Warren, Joseph

Visitors to Monticello often wonder at its practical accessories. Jefferson labored a month to save a minute. His home was impractical from the start — by reason of its very site (on a mountain), by the height given the first version of the building (later disguised in a way that left useless spaces in and around its dome), by the perpetual course of its dismantling and reassembly. To make the house more convenient, he made his daughter and her children live for years in a chaos of artistic second thoughts, sometimes sheltered only by canvas as the roof rose, fell, and assumed new shapes in his mind.

— Garry Wills

Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1978)