Arlington National Cemetery, Ord-Weitzel Gate, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia

Significance: After the August 1814 fire, architect James Hoban was responsible for restoring the President's Mansion and nearby Executive Department office buildings. He used masons from Scotland to do the stonework. Several years later, Hoban employed the same stonemasons to carve the ornamental, Ionic porticoes gracing the north elevation of the State Department and War Department buildings. In 1879, Montgomery C. Meigs initiated the transfer of the six columns from the north portico of the War Department building to Arlington National Cemetery for the construction of the Sheridan and Ord-Weitzel gateways. He did so to "[preserve] these historic columns, among which have moved the chief soldiers of the Army and the chiefs of the War Department during the last sixty years, and they have [since] furnished very handsome gates to the principal cemetery [of the United States]." As formal points of entry into the park-like cemetery, the gateways represented the influence of neoclassicism in federal America and its resurgence as a stylistic revival late in the nineteenth century.
Survey number: HABS VA-1348-C
Building/structure dates: 1818- 1820 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: ca. 1879 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1971 Demolished
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 14000146