Bunker Hill Monument Association Issues an RFP for Architectural Rendering of the Bunker Hill Monument

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The committee of the Bunker Hili Monument Association issued a Request for Proposals to the Bunker Hill Monument being planned in Charlestown Massachusetts, according to an advertisement in the Vermont Journal dated November 21, 1825.

The proposal offered "a premium of $100 for the best model of a monumental structure or column, 220 feet in height, to be built of hewn granite."

The committee stipulated that "the proposals should contain two plans; one, the architectural plan and elevation of the work, with a suitable scale; vertical and horizontal sections of the interior; particular statements of the proportions and magnitudes of the members; and if a column, drawings of the ornamental portions of the pedestal; the other (plan) a handsomely finished prospective communications view be of the forwarded work."  Edward Everett was the signatory.



But even as the request for proposals had gone out, the Committee had already decided that architect Solomon Willard was the logical choice to build the monument, and he was the preferred candidate from the beginning. 

Everette wrote to Willard in April, 1825,  "that the thanks of the Committee be expressed to Mr. S. Willard for the preparation of a very beautiful plan of a monumental column at their request; that, though the Committee have felt it their duty, at this stage of the business, in discharge of a public trust, to make a general advertisement to the artists of the country, yet nothing is farther from their purpose in so doing, than to undervalue the very beautiful plan prepared by Mr. Willard, whose services on this occasion, the Committee highly appreciate and desire to acknowledge by ample and honorable compensation."


On June 17, 1825,  the cornerstone for a monument was laid on the 50th anniversary of the famous battle in 1775. Attending the cornerstone ceremony was American Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette, and Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who gave the keynote address. 


Willard and construction engineer Gridley Bryant devised a method of extracting granite from the Quincy quarry and creating large-scale blocks that could readily be put to commercial use. They worked with investor Thomas Handasyd Perkins to establish the Granite Railway in 1826, setting up a system to extract the granite from the quarries, ship it by rail on oxen-drawn cars over to the Neponset River in nearby Milton, and then by boat across Boston Harbor to Charlestown, where the Bunker Hill Monument was being built. The Granite Railway thereby became the first commercial railroad in the U.S.

Construction on the granite obelisk continued for many years, delayed by costs and other factors, but the monument was finally completed in 1842 and dedicated in 1843. 

In retrospect, the Bunker Hill Monument Association concluded that given"Willard's unpaid work on the design, his time and expenses in finding a suitable quarry.... by his thought, skill and labor, in the grand structure that now crowns the glorious battle-ground o Bunker Hill....that (we) are more indebted to Solomon Willard than to any other man for the monument,"  according to the Association's 1875 proceedings. 




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