John Ericsson National Memorial

The John Ericsson National Memorial in West Potomac Park, at Ohio Drive and Independence Avenue, honors the Swedish-American engineer who revolutionized seafaring with the screw propeller. Ericsson also designed the USS Monitor, the Union's ironclad whose 1862 duel with the Confederate Virginia ended the age of wooden warships. Congress commissioned the memorial in 1916, and President Coolidge unveiled it in 1926, partly financed by Swedish-American communities. Sculptor James Earle Fraser, who also designed the Buffalo nickel, modeled a seated bronze Ericsson on red Milford granite, flanked by three allegorical figures of Vision, Labor and Adventure. Today the statue sits a little off the main tourist path along the Tidal Basin, but draws crowds on cherry-blossom weekends in April.