President Roosevelt asked the Commission of Fine Arts about the possibility of erecting a memorial to Thomas Jefferson. Construction went from 1938-43, & Roosevelt laid the first cornerstone himself.
Construction began in 1914, and the memorial was opened to the public in 1922. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to a crowd by the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 .
This memorial consists of 56 stones, each with the signature, occupation and hometown of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
