Phallic Towers

Washington Monument, D.C, July 2012
Photo Courtesy : Muddit Poonia

So, there I was at Washington DC on a hot, sunny day, taking in the sights. Standing in the lawns of the U.S Capitol, with the Smithsonian Group of Museums on your left, what you see in the distance is the Washington Monument. Tall and erect, it shoots right up from the ground to the sky, a 555 foot tall marble obelisk - a monument to the father of the American nation - George Washington. First question that pops into my head - - of all the things they could have done with the fairly large area encompassing the monument, why did they decide to build a pretty huge..erm..phallus?

Eiffel Tower, Paris, June'11
Photo Courtesy : Muddit Poonia

Its not the only one of its kind, really. Good ol' Paree has pretty much the most famous of them - the Eiffel Tower. In May 1884 Maurice Koechlin, senior engineer with the Compagnie des Establissments Eiffel, working at his home, made an outline drawing of their scheme for a centerpiece for the 1889 World Fair in Paris, described by him as "a great pylon, consisting of four lattice girders standing apart at the base and coming together at the top, joined together by metal trusses at regular intervals". Say what you like Koechlin, the Eiffel is another big huge phallus on the face of the earth. 

Dam Square, Amsterdam, May '11
Photo Courtesy: Fellow Tourist

Of course, if we count the towering skyscrapers that are the hallmarks of their respective metropolises in the modern world, this list would include the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in New York, the CN Tower in Toronto, the TV tower in Berlin, the Petronas towers in Kuala Lampur, the fairly new Burj-al-arab in Dubai among several others. The National Monument at Dam Square, Amsterdam is unremarkable apart from its interesting(in this context) shape. But a little more Googling landed me on an interesting piece of information - Cleopatra's Needle, a pair of obelisks located originally in the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis were transported each to London and New York. Paris, however, was the first to get its own, from a different original site. The icing on the cake though has to be the Love Valley - located in Turkey. Like the inspired dude who post this story on Neatorama said: “If God created Love Valley, he most likely did it when he was a school boy.”

Of course, Hindu mythology is the most outgoing of them all. I'm talking of the Shiva Linga  Then further along the timeline of Indian history, the Ashoka Pillar and the Qutub Minar surface.

Look at them towers! Top of the Rock, NYC, July 2012
(Photo Courtesy: Muddit Poonia) 

Now, even a basic knowledge of structural engineering would tell you that that for tall structures, the phallic shape is one of the most stable and hence, most popular. But I'd like to take it a step further. Why is the 'tall, thin, phallic' shape the most popular shape for memorials anyway? I mean, another proposed structure instead of the Eiffel was shaped like a large guillotine. But the Eiffel was chosen over it. Memorials for Lincoln and Jefferson are in the form of Greek temples, but not the Washington. Further back in time, church spires and forts had the same form. Being in a very Dan Brown-ish frame of mind right now, I'd love to believe it has something to do with the association of the male form with greatness and power, authority and dominance. Could it be only a mere coincidence that so many memorials of war and powerful statesmen are in the shape of a fairly large phallus? Could it be possible that the basic idea of a skyscraper sprung from the same architectural ideas of yore? 

Not pushing it, but the Wiki page on skyscrapers carries a quote from Louis Sullivan's The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, 1896: 

"What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. It must be tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line."

P.S Yes, this topic was incredibly uncomfortable to write about. But I still wonder about it. Does anyone have answers?