Women's Titanic Memorial in Southwest DC

This post is a response to Melissa’s question about the Titanic Memorial from the comments on QOTD: How to Respond to Teens Attacking Adults in SW DC. Picture by Flickr user NCinDC.

If you follow the sidewalk southeast past the last club on Water Street, SW, you will find yourself leaving the road to walk on a wide promenade between the glimmering surface of the Washington Channel and the high, curving boughs of old trees in Washington Channel Park.

Follow the quaint globe lights to the very end of the park and you will see a tall statue of a man with his arms flung wide to form a cross, a flowing stone cloth partly draped around his body. Behind his left hand the water stretches out past Hains Point to join the Anacostia and Potomac rivers as they flow together toward the ocean.

It's a quiet spot, a fitting place for a silent tribute, even though it's not the location the monument's designers had in mind.

According to the Great Lakes Titanic Society and the National Park Service, the Women's Titanic Memorial was initially erected by the Women's Titanic Memorial Association in Rock Creek Park at the end of New Hampshire Avenue on May 26, 1931 to honor the men who gave their lives on the Titanic so that women and children could escape on life boats.

Just over thirty years later, in 1966, the planners for the Kennedy Center decided on the same spot, so the Women's Titanic Monument was slipped into storage to make room. In 1968 the monument was quietly planted in its current home in Washington Channel Park, and soon few besides the locals seemed to remember it existed.

According to an old fragment of a Washington Post article, twelve years later a small group of men decided to change that. In 1978 they began an annual tradition of toasting the men who gave their lives on the Titanic every April 15th. This tradition has expanded into a full evening of events: a men-only black tie dinner by the Kennedy Center on the 14th, followed by a ceremonial walk to the memorial in full tuxedos, and culminating in a round of champagne toasts in front of the memorial at 1:30 a.m. on the 15th.

The Men's Titanic Society coordinates this quirky annual event. It has become such an ingrained tradition that the society's founder and president, Jim Silman, poo-poohed a suggestion this year to move the memorial to a more prominent position at the tip of Hains Point where J. Seward Johnson's sculpture "The Awakening" once stood.

To reach Washington Channel Park and the Women's Titanic Memorial by Metro, you can walk straight south from the Waterfront Metro on 4th Street and hang a left on P Street. However, it's a prettier walk if you take M Street to 6th Street SW and walk through Washington Channel Park, especially if you manage to come in time to watch the sunset play on the water of the Channel.

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