For over 200 years, the Washington Monument has stood high above its neighboring homes and buildings in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Place. Built with marble from quarries in Baltimore County, the 178-foot monument, with 227 steps spiraling up inside its column, offers Baltimoreans a bird’s eye view of the city below. Taken by A. Aubrey Bodine sometime around January 1950, this photograph shows the monument and Mount Vernon Place covered in snow. The annual Monument Lighting, a now 50-plus year tradition signaling the start of the Baltimore holiday season, would not start until 1971.
