Before the rise of the Bush family, the Tafts of Ohio were the most successful political dynasty in the Republican Party. Along with the Democratic Kennedys and flexible Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Adamses, they remain one of the top political families in U.S. history. They are also the oldest still-active family, and longest-running direct descendancy, stretching from Secretary of War Alphonso Taft (1876) to current Ohio Gov. Bob Taft II. The middlemost member of this line, and the longest-serving among them, was Robert A. Taft I, who is memorialized on Capitol Hill at the appropriately named Robert A. Taft I Memorial and Carillon.

Taft's well-known nickname was "Mr. Republican," earned for his role as the party's ideological spokesperson. Educated at Yale and Harvard, he was conservative for his day -- viz., an opponent of the New Deal and isolationist until the attack on Pearl Harbor. He made multiple unsuccessful runs at the GOP presidential nomination, and finally '52 was supposed to be his year. Then Ike came along. "Mr. Republican" as he was, Taft became Eisenhower's biggest congressional supporter, albeit not for long -- he succumbed to hip cancer the following year. His last District address was at 1688 31st St. NW. It didn't take long for his colleagues to pass a resolution calling for a monument. A million dollars were raised, and it was finished barely seven years later, with an April 14, 1959 dedication ceremony featuring former President Herbert Hoover.

The memorial must be among Washington's largest least-known monuments. Despite its great height, it stands shrouded by trees in the middle of a park circumscribed by Constitution, Louisiana and New Jersey avenues, which is off the beaten path for tourists. Unless you're from Ohio, or you're a huge fan of the Taft-Hartley Act, chances are you'd never think to go looking. But the monument is not just large; it is also fairly distinctive.

The first noteworthy feature is, of course, the marble bell tower (aka carillon) designed by architect Douglas W. Orr, measuring 115 feet in height, 45 by 55 feet at the base and 11 by 32 feet at the top. A seven-ton swinging bell and 26 smaller ones are set to chime at recurring intervals: Once at the opening of each session of Congress, on the hour and quarter hour between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. during the session, at 2:00 p.m. on July 4 of every year -- approximately the time Declaration of Independence was signed. Tbey are also rung for special events, such as a 2000 ceremony honoring the Army Reserve featuring a speech by Reserve Major General and centenenarian Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

Standing at the base of this Kubrickian monolith is a 10-foot statue of Taft himself, with his left hand at rest and right forefinger pointing at his belly button (not that his belly button is visible. The sculptor was Wheeler Williams, and it's this piece for which he is probably best remembered. (In some other Williams statues, you can see belly buttons, and in others you can't -- although you probably should.) It is the only outdoor statue of a United States senator in the city.

All of this rests on a stone foundation several feet tall. A short flight of steps leads up to the memorial, where an elevated path rings the tower base. Surrounding this a shallow moat, which is dry in winter but as the August photo accompanying this piece shows, is not always so.

All that's changed with Bob Taft in the half-century he's stood on Capitol Hill is that the trees around him have grown taller and more dense. But nor has he been entirely ignored. According to a brief item in the Post from 1987, on an 85-degree June afternoon, an area teacher spied a snow cone resting in "his hot, bronze hand." Two years later, on what would have been his hundredth birthday, the monument bore witness to another strange event: liberal Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum saluting his memory and saying: "I thought he was a great U.S. senator. Although on many occasions I differed with his political opinions." According to a 1990 press release, the Church of Scientology held a "unique interfaith bell-ringing ceremony" on-site, bringing together a "diverse group of religious, community and business leaders."

Taft even earned his own chapter in "Profiles in Courage," in which future President John F. Kennedy (or Ted Sorenson) dubbed him "Mr. Integrity." The book praises his willingness to take unpopular stands; his sponsorship of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act couldn't have won him many friends back home in his labor-heavy home state. Even Taft's "bitter political enemy," former President Harry Truman, once said -- and is so quoted in the book -- "He and I did not agree on public policy, but he knew where I stood and I knew where he stood."

To see for yourself where Robert Taft stands, take the Red Line to Union Station. Exit to the front of the building and take Louisiana Avenue (running perpendicular to the station) from Union Square Plaza. Cross New Jersey Avenue and head left. Head for the tall thing in the middle of the park.

(First Taft Memorial image courtesy the Architect of the Capitol)