The elevator inside the Washington Monument broke down temporarily only days after it reopened for the first time in years.
The 555-foot monument, which closed for renovations to its elevator and security systems in 2016, reopened to the public on Thursday.
The elevator stopped working for about an hour around 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon, according to WTOP. The elevator would only travel between the 490-foot and 500-foot level and would not return to the ground floor. No one was on the elevator during its brief malfunction.
The elevator was down for about an hour, but came back online; no evacuation via the stairs was necessary. We apologize to our visitors who were inconvenienced. Normal operations have resumed and tours are running on schedule.
— National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) September 21, 2019
“The elevator was down for about an hour, but came back online,” the National Park Service (NPS) tweeted Saturday. “No evacuation via the stairs was necessary.”
“We hope the biggest difference is that the elevator is now far more reliable than it was when we were forced to close in 2016,” a spokesperson for the National Park Service told WTOP the day before the monument reopened. “We were closing two, sometimes three, times a week due to mechanical issues in 2016.”
The iconic obelisk also made headlines over the summer when a full-scale image of the Saturn V rocket was projected onto it to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch.
