Washington, D.C.’s first monument to honor a Black woman on public land features Mary Mcleod Bethune and two children as its subjects. Located at the east end of Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park, the bronze and stone monument was paid for by funds raised by the NCNW. Erected in 1974 (19 years after her death), the base features a quote from Bethune that begins with “I leave you love. I leave you hope,” and ends with “I leave you finally a responsibility to our young people.”

Olive Risley was in her 20s when she was adopted by William Henry Seward, who had served as U.S. Secretary of State under presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Today, a lead sculpture of Risley (missing a hand and seasonally sporting a witch hat) stands in the yard of a private home at the corner of North Carolina Avenue and 6th Street SE. Sculpted in 1971 by John Cavanaugh, the statue was made to resemble an idealized Victorian lady because Cavanaugh couldn’t locate a photo of Risley.

Erected in 1878 at the bottom of Capitol Hill, the 44-foot-high Peace Monument is sculpted from Carrara marble with a blue granite base. At the top, two robed female figures lean against each other: Grief and History. Look behind the Peace Monument to the top of the Capitol dome for perhaps the most-photographed woman in Washington, D.C. The Statue of Freedom stands 19 feet, 6 inches tall, but perched nearly 300 feet above the Capitol’s east plaza, she has one of the best views in the city.

Statue of Freedom looks east, forever in a staring contest with another of D.C.’s famous women in stone: Contemplation of Justice, installed in 1935 on the left side of the U.S. Supreme Court. A matching male statue, a guardian of law, is to the right of the stairs; both preside over a gleaming white plaza underneath the court’s entrance inscription, “Equal Justice Under Law.”

You won’t find a woman’s name at the end of the Constitution, but on April 10, 1980, the New Labor Building at 200 Constitution Avenue NW was named after one: Frances Perkins. The naming ceremony took place on the 100th anniversary of Perkins’ birth. She had died in 1965, but led a ground-breaking life as an educator, workers-rights advocate, the fourth-ever U.S. Secretary of Labor, and the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet (in the FDR administration).

The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, the Black Canoe sits in a large open courtyard of the Canadian Embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, the only embassy to be located on the presidential inaugural route. The large bronze dugout canoe is packed full of mythological figures from the Aboriginal heritage of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the Canadian Pacific Coast, including a trickster raven, Bear Mother, and Dogfish Woman.

National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), the first museum in the world of its kind, was founded in D.C. in the 1980s. In its current location on New York Avenue NW since 1987, the museum is currently closed for renovations until fall of 2023. But visitors wishing to support and celebrate women in the arts can view NMWA’s current exhibition from the street. Katharina Cibulka’s SOLANGE plays with the scale of a traditionally small women’s craft to broadcast a big message.

Dedicated in 1993, the Vietnam Women's Memorial depicts two women helping a fallen soldier. Funds for the memorial were raised by the founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation, Diane Carlson Evans. According to the foundation, former Army nurse Evans “became the first woman in American history to spearhead a campaign to place a national monument in Washington, D.C. which recognizes the contributions of military women to their country, as well as civilian women’s patriotic service.”

The FDR Memorial is designed as open rooms, each representing one of Roosevelt’s four terms as president. Room Four highlights FDR’s death in 1945, and also features a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt, the only First Lady to be depicted in a presidential memorial. She deserves her own recognition apart from the accomplishments she shared with her husband: Eleanor, an activist and mother of six, was the first U.S. delegate to the United Nations and helped craft the Declaration of Human Rights.

Jane Delano is regarded as the founder of the American Red Cross during World War I. She served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps from 1909 to 1912, and was the chairman of the new National Committee on Red Cross Nursing Service. Delano, who is also credited with creating the first volunteer nursing unit, is memorialized with a bronze statue standing in the courtyard of the Red Cross’ national headquarters.