Jefferson Pier

Jefferson Pier, Jefferson Stone, or the Jefferson Pier Stone, (pronounced pie er, like radials of a pie) in Washington, D. C., marks the second prime meridian of the United States even though it was never officially recognized, either by presidential proclamation or by a resolution or act of Congress.

According to a notation on Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's 1791 "Plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of the government of the United States " (see L'Enfant Plan), Andrew Ellicott measured a prime meridian (longitude 0°0') through the future site of the U. S. Capitol. (Shortly after L'Enfant prepared this plan, its subject received the name "City of Washington".) Thomas Jefferson, who at the time was serving as the United States Secretary of State, supervised Ellicott's and L'Enfant's activities during the initial planning of the nation's capital city. Jefferson hoped that the United States would become scientifically as well as politically independent from Europe. He therefore desired that the new nation's capital city should contain a new "first meridian". A prominent geometric feature of L'Enfant's plan was a large right triangle whose hypotenuse was a wide avenue (now part of Pennsylvania Avenue, NW) connecting the "President's house" (now the White House) and the "Congress house" (now the U. S. Capitol building). To complete the triangle, a line projecting due south from the center of the President's house intersected at a right angle a line projecting due west from the center of the Congress house. to survey a new meridian line extending south from the center of the President's House that intersected a line extending due west from the planned center of the Capitol building. On October 15, 1804, Nicholas King, Surveyor of the City of Washington, erected at the intersection "a small pier, covered by a flat free stone, on which the lines are drawn." Most of the length of a surveying pier is buried vertically in the ground for stability. Free stone is fine grained stone soft enough to carve with a chisel, yet has no tendency to split in any preferential direction. Another stone, the Capitol Stone, was erected where the north south line from the President's house intersected a line extending west from the south end of the Capitol, and a third stone, the Meridian Stone, was erected on the north south meridian two miles north on Peters Hill, now Meridian Hill. Neither of the two latter stones survives. Due to errors either when the Jefferson Pier was initially surveyed or when it was replaced, its center is now 2.23 feet (1 m) south of the Capitol's centerline. The 1804 stone marker replaced one of two wooden posts driven into the ground in 1793 at its site. The marker was originally located on the south bank of Tiber Creek, East of the marker, Tiber Creek was transformed into the Washington City Canal.

Barges used the marker as a mooring post during and after the first phase of Washington Monument's construction, which began in 1848. The project left in place about 20 inches of the stone's foundation.

On December 2, 1889, John Stewart, a draftsman acting on the instructions of Colonel O. H. Ernst, Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, erected a replacement marker above the recovered foundation of the original marker. According to 1898 and 1899 reports, an inscription on the west side of the replacement marker stated: "Position of the meridian post, erected September 20, 1793, and position of the Jefferson stone pier, erected December 18, 1804, and recovered and reerected, December 2, 1889." (Silvio Bedini has written that these reports did not accurately describe the inscription.) The marker was lowered to within 8 inches of its top, so that the inscription was not visible above ground. The meridian of the United States was changed to the center of the small dome of the Old Naval Observatory in 1850 (see Old Naval Observatory meridian) and finally replaced by the Greenwich Meridian as the legal prime meridian for both boundaries and navigation in 1912. In 1920, Congress approved the placement of a new delineation stone on the Ellipse, the Zero Milestone, which is an itinerary marker from which official mileages from Washington would be determined. The new marker, a gift of the Lee Highway Association, was for some reason placed one foot west of the original meridian line extending north south from the center of the White House. In 1943, the Jefferson Memorial was completed due south of the White House on the Washington Meridian. As a result, the Jefferson Pier now stands on a north south line that passes near the centers of the "President's house" and the memorial dedicated to the president for whom the Pier is named.

An artifact sometimes confusing to and often overlooked by tourists, Jefferson Pier is maintained today by the National Park Service under its National Mall and Memorial Parks administrative unit. In 1890 a new monument, the Ellipse Meridian Stone, was placed by the Coast and Geodetic Survey in the center of the Ellipse in President's Park about 1506 feet (459 m) north of the Jefferson Pier in a more protected area. Theodolite measurements showed the new Ellipse Meridian Stone stood from the longitudinal line of the replacement Jefferson Stone, indicating one of the two markers was improperly located.