(intense upbeat music)
- [Teen] Welcome back, What's Inside.
Today we are going to see
what's inside the Washington Monument.
- [Man] From a very unique perspective,
this is VR180, so if you take your finger
or if you tilt your phone you can see
the top of the Washington Monument.
- [Teen] So, you can like scroll with your finger or
- [Man] Or see all these flags everywhere.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] But today I might look a little bit sweaty.
That's because I just barely ran up the entire
stairwell of the Washington Monument,
something that not very many people have done,
[Teen] Yeah.
and yes we filmed it and we're going to show you
some unique things that are inside
of the stairwell of the Washington Monument.
This has been closed for almost the last two years.
- [Teen] So we are the first people to show you
a VR experience of the Washington Monument.
- [Man] But even if you're just watching on your phone
in a normal way, this is going to be
a really interesting video, and hopefully educational.
So, come with us inside, we'll go check it out.
- [Teen] Let's go.
- [Man] This is my first time ever going
in the Washington Monument.
- [Teen] This is a newly renovated elevator.
- [Man] One of the first people ever.
(upbeat music)
- [Teen] Five.
- [Man] This is it, I guess.
(upbeat music)
When this building was complete in 1884,
it was the tallest building in the entire world
at 555 feet tall.
- [Teen] In the world?
[Man] In the world.
We just took the
- [Man] elevator up and uh, - [Teen] Wow!
it was pretty easy to get up to the top.
I think we need to take the stairs down later, but
- Yeah.
- [Man] Open sesame.
- [Teen] Perfect timing!
- [Man] (laughs, claps) Here we go!
- [Teen] Oh, look at this!
- [Man] Oh my gosh!
- [Teen] Whoa!
- [Man] There's the U.S. Capitol right there!
- [Teen] Look at the lawn.
- [Man] All the Smithsonian right along that side.
- [Teen] Look at the lawn, there's like...
It's huge!
(exhilarating music)
- [Man] That is so beautiful,
there is not a better view in D.C. than that.
(exhilarating music)
- [Man] They bring about fifteen people up the elevator,
and about every hour,
there's 110 people that can come up.
- [Teen] Wow, this is beautiful.
There's so much water.
Once we got up here I was really surprised how much water
there is like surrounding this area.
- [Man] There really is a lot of water,
you've seen the video that we did
at the World War II Monument,
you could see all of the water that goes underneath
and how they have like a fail safe in place
that pushes all the excess water out to the Potomac,
but yeah you can see it.
No wonder it's so humid here
and they call D.C. kind of swampland.
- [Teen] Yeah it used to be a swamp
but then they had to drain the swamp out into the river.
- [Man] (mumbles) Yeah.
What's crazy is this building
is like tighter at the top than it is at the bottom,
it's just the way that it was built
because it is entirely made out of stone
and if you look up right now you can see all of that stone.
You can see, cause you're on VR right now,
so turn your phone or just look up with your headset.
- [Teen] Just scroll up or...
- [Man] And you can even see the red light that's blinking
so that airplanes can see that
this building is here at nighttime.
- [Teen] Yeah. That's crazy.
- [Man] The light looks ginormous from here,
but it's actually,
outside you just see this little tiny blinking light.
- [Teen] It's really cool too,
because this is the largest free standing masonry structure,
so like the world's, the world's tallest.
- [Man] That is crazy so a building made
entirely out of stone.
Yes, it has a few little,
maybe there's a tiny bit of concrete
inside of these pillars that were put in later,
but there's really no concrete in the rest of the building.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] It is just made out of stone.
You're now looking at what is probably my favorite view
of the west side.
We filmed two videos about these right now,
if you wanna go watch em, they're in the link below,
but we did what's underneath the Lincoln Memorial,
and, which is actually really interesting.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] What's underneath there.
And also what's underneath the World War II monument,
which is right there.
- [Teen] This is like the best view ever.
Look at this.
- [Man] That reflecting pool is huge.
- [Teen] Looks so cool.
- [Man] The people that are walking along side of it
look like ants right now.
Right now we're in like the pyramid looking part
of the top of the Washington Monument.
And this is what you see.
These are the only windows.
They're these small windows.
- [Teen] Yeah like if you like come here at night,
you can see a bit of light inside of these
which they look so small.
- [Man] This is it.
But it's enough for you to have a really nice view
that you can look out and see things from up here.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] An interesting fact about the Washington Monument.
On August 23, 2011, there was actually an earthquake
that was about 90 miles south of here.
5.8 earthquake.
- [Teen] Wow.
- [Man] But up here at the very top, they could feel it
and the people were kind of thrown about
and they actually fell down.
So I think they fell down.
But not down, down off the thing
but like fell the ground up here.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] There were some visible cracks
that were put into the building.
They did go and they fixed up all those cracks.
Obviously there's some things in place
that make it a little structurally stronger
than what it was back then.
So it should be safe.
It should be okay up here.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] But interesting piece of history,
that there was an earthquake.
But I would have liked to have been up here for that.
- [Teen] Oh yeah, that would have been so cool.
(laughs)
(medium tempo music)
- [Man] So this is a really small space.
It's smaller than I thought up here.
But there's eight windows,
really, really good air conditioning.
- With four amazing views.
It looks...this is the best view.
- [Man] If you're going to D.C.,
- It looks so cool.
- [Man] it's the best view.
If you have to wait in line for this,
it's amazing, right? - Yeah.
- [Man] Now we're gonna go down the stairs
into the next room that's below this
and see what's down there.
I already know there's no windows
cause you can see it from the outside there's no windows.
- Yeah.
- [Man] But this is the second place you would go
if you were here.
- [Teen] (mumbles)
(slow, dramatic music)
- [Man] Whoa!
- [Teen] Yeah this looks cooler.
- [Man] All right, let's this is the Exhibit Hall.
- [Teen] What? Lightening rods?
- [Man] The lightenings in heaven may scar and blacken it.
An earthquake may shake its foundations,
but the character which it commemorates
and illustrates is secure.
Within a year of having the building up,
it did get hit by lightening
and it actually cracked some of it.
- [Teen] In the same year that he said that.
- [Man] So they put these lightening rods on top of it
that they ended up replacing in 2012
but it's super interesting to see
they're burnt and they're scarred
from many lightening strikes.
- Like from lightening.
That is so cool.
And then what are these little ones?
Are they just some more?
- [Man] Yeah, those are ones that were bent
from the lightening.
- Oh my gosh. Lightening.
Lightening hit it.
- Right now were in the Exhibit Hall,
which is just underneath the pyramid, dome-like structure
and we haven't even talked about
the actual President George Washington yet.
He was the first president of the United States
and he was also the commander of the military
when they beat Britain,
as when they were only 13 states back in the day.
So an incredibly important president
and that's why the monument is tall and strong
and right in the middle of D.C. to represent
one of the strongest presidents that the US has ever had.
The construction of the Washington Monument started in 1848
but after about 20 years, they stopped.
They didn't have funding for it anymore.
And it just kind of sat for 22 years.
Just sat there as a half-finished building.
So when you have this Washington Monument that was
like not even halfway built,
just sitting there for 20 years
with no progress being made on it,
it kind of made Washington look bad.
Like is this country really progressing?
It is really a strong country?
And so finally the National Parks took over.
They raised a bunch of money and they went to build it.
But the tricky thing is the quarry that they used
that was just here in Baltimore,
it went out of business and it wasn't there anymore.
And so they tried to use a different quarry
but the stone was different colors.
And why that's interesting is like,
you can even see that right now.
If you're outside and you come to D.C.,
even if you don't tour this and go to the top.
- [Teen] You can see like the first 150 feet
or somethin like that.
You can see that it's a darker color
than what's above that.
It's a few different colors.
- [Man] Yeah so there's kind of the history with it.
If you've been followin our channel for awhile,
you might remember that I have this weird goal
of running the stairs in the tallest building
in every state.
- Yeah, I'm forgetting you had said that in awhile.
- [Man] Nah, it's been awhile.
We did Hawaii one time
and we showed we ran the tallest building
on our family channel
but I've never even considered running the stairs
of the Washington Monument because...
- Because you are not allowed to go up the stairs.
- [Man] No, look at this.
Emergency alarm will sound.
There's probably like security guards in there.
You don't want to mess with the stairwell.
- You can see it, fire exit
and then there's the stairwell through this.
Yeah, there it is.
- [Man] One interesting thing about the stairwell
is that there are 193 stones
that are from the bottom to the top
that are commemorative stones
cause back when they were building it
and they were looking for funding,
they asked from funding from people
and they said send in a stone and some money
and we can put your plaque inside of the building.
So cities, states, civic groups
and even countries sent in stones and funding
that were then placed within the stairwell.
We have some friends at the Department of the Interior
and they decided to hook me up.
And hook you guys up with a very strange request.
We are actually going to go up the stairs
of the Washington Monument.
- So you can check that off your list.
One day you will be able to...
- [Man] Do you want to go with me?
Do you want to go up the stairs of this entire building?
(teen sighs)
- [Teen] I'm going to be so sweaty.
- [Man] Yes. The answer is yes.
Okay we're at the bottom.
This is the stone from 1848
that they originally put in here.
- [Teen] I think this is the oldest stairwell
you've ever been in.
- [Man] This is definitely it, guys.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] I can't believe we get to do this.
But we're gonna find some plaques.
And we're going to, maybe not run up the whole thing,
but we're gonna walk up it,
get up the full stairwell and find some of those plaques.
All right, we're on the first platform...here's Arkansas.
What is this one right here?
- This is Washington, sent in by the National Grace.
- National Grace.
Whoa, okay Delaware. You win on this floor.
(upbeat pop music)
- [Man] A hundred feet, we made it.
We're about 20% of the way to the top.
- Yup.
- [Man] I don't feel too winded cause
we've been stopping to admire these things.
Where usually when I run stairs,
it's just go as fast as you can.
This one's interesting here cause it's black looking one.
It says 'from the home of Knox by citizens of...
- Thomaston, Maine.
- [Man] Thomaston, Maine.
(upbeat pop music)
- [Man] So the rule is these stones needed to be
three foot by five foot.
But of course there's gotta be few states
that just wanna break the rule to show how big
and how great they are.
- Yeah.
- And the winner for the entire Washington Monument
in that category is New York.
Look at New York.
I almost said New York City but New York is ginormous.
This is so big.
- Yeah look at that.
- There's not one bigger than this anywhere. (laughs)
Of course, leave it to the state of New York.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- Least they put a really cool like,
beaver-looking guy with funky teeth on it.
- [Teen] Yeah, City of New York, thank you for this.
- This is a key moment.
We are at 140 feet right now
but if we remember from when we said earlier
that this thing was shut down for almost 25 years
cause they ran out of funding
and then they started rebuilding it again.
Well this is that point where they stopped,
about 150 feet up.
You can see right here along this line.
Everything below it is 15 feet thick
and it's made out of this stone
that they just kind of cut with their hands.
- [Teen] Yeah.
- [Man] Like if you look on some of the edges,
look at these cuts.
They're not very cleanly cut.
It's just hand-cut, carved stones they just threw in here.
But if you notice,
the walls kind of go
and they start going inward right there.
Well what they realized is after 25 years,
when they decided to start rebuilding this thing,
they decided that if they continue
with 15 feet thick all the way up,
it's just gonna collapse on itself.
So it actually made more sense to make it more narrow
and when you get up to the top
to where we were at the windows,
it's actually only 18 inches thick of walls right there.
So it just gets narrower and narrower as it goes up
so it's not quite as heavy.
Okay we made it to one that is...hits home for us.
We're from the state of Utah
and they're one of the only ones
to have two plaques in here.
And originally they had this one made out of limestone,
which was not the smartest because
limestone kind of crumbles.
But you can see the honeybee right there?
Like the bee hive?
That's like on the flag of the state of Utah.
- [Teen] And I'm really happy that they did put
the Oreo, the Oreo brick right here for Utah.
- [Man] Or granite, as other people call it.
Same thing that they made the temple out of.
- [Teen] It looks like,
yeah, it looks like Oreo's.
- [Man] Oreo cookies.
I think this is a good point for me to accomplish my goal
of running to the top of the building
and then running back down.
Give me a few seconds
while I run to the top of the building and back down again.
(uptempo music)
- [Man] I promise I was going faster.
No making fun of me.
(laughs)
I did it.
I made it to the top.
It was about 490 feet.
It's not the full 555 that's the top but I did it.
Am I sweating?
Yeah, I'm sweating.
I ran the stairs.
If you wanna check out what I'm talking about,
runstairs.com is actually my website where I run stairs.
So I hope you guys enjoyed seeing what's inside
- That was so cool.
- [Man] the Washington Monument.
- All those plaques and just...
the view up there was so cool.
- [Man] Unbelievable.
If you're ever in town in D.C.,
make sure you check it out
and big thanks to the National Park Service
for giving this opportunity to see it.
There is our public lands all across America
that you guys can visit.
They're public lands. They're your lands.
Take the time to check them out and tour it
and see the history of this great nation.
- There are some amazing places around.
- [Man] It was great
and let us know what you guys thought about the VR180.
I'd like to make a couple more videos with this.
I think it's just such a cool way to see stuff.
All right, see ya!
- Bye!
(uptempo music)
- [Man] Bye.
- [Man 2] I'd love to (mumbles).
- [Man] Awesome. Thanks.
- [Man] Where you from?
- [Man 2] Georgia. (mumbles)