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Statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (Washington, D.C.)

statue by Vincenc Makovský in Washington, D.C., U.S.

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ16900693 ↗
Source-derived summary

The statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk consists of a statue of Tomáš Masaryk, the founding President of Czechoslovakia, sited in a small hardscaped park. The memorial was established by the non-profit American Friends of the Czech Republic, which obtained an Act of Congress to authorize the site, raised the funding, and oversaw the design and construction. The statue was in part a gift from the Czech Republic. The memorial was dedicated on Embassy Row on September 19, 2002, with the participation of Czech President Václav Havel, former Slovak President Michal Kováč, and Prague-born former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The statue was sculpted from life by Vincenc Makovský, shortly before Masaryk's death in 1937. Long housed in the National Gallery in Prague, it was only cast into bronze in 1968 during the Prague Spring but was not erected at the time.

The park in which the statue stands today, a triangle surrounded by Q Street NW, 22nd Street NW, and Massachusetts Avenue, was designed by landscape architect Roger G. Courtenay of the firm EDAW.

The memorial includes quotes from the Czechoslovak Declaration of independence, drafted under Masaryk's direction in Washington and proclaimed by him on October 18, 1918 on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia; and from a speech delivered by George H. W. Bush in Prague in November 1990. Coincidentally, the memorial is geographically close to the equestrian statue of Philip Sheridan, also on Embassy Row, sculpted by Gutzon Borglum who assisted Masaryk in drafting the Declaration of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (Washington, D.C.)” is statue by Vincenc Makovský in Washington, D.C., U.S. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Statue, Tomáš and Garrigue, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2002, 1937, 1968, 1918—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1937. For this dossier, Statue, Tomáš and Garrigue is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “statue by Vincenc Makovský in Washington, D.C., U.S” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16900693. Authority coordinates are 38.911, -77.048. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 1937, 1968 and 1918.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (Washington, D.C.)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.