When we went over to revisit the John Witherspoon statue at Connecticut and N Streets NW yesterday, someone had beaten us to it. An older man was reading the inscription at the base of the statue. When asked if he had ever seen it before, he acted as if he suddenly realized he was late for a super important meeting. “Yeah, I always knew it was here,” he said, fleeing.

In fairness, the Witherspoon statue isn’t exactly accommodating. Unlike the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow statue half a block away, there’s no place to sit around Witherspoon. Besides, no matter how esteemed the plot was when the statue was dedicated in 1909, it now stands primarily as a safety base while crossing Connecticut and 18th Streets.

It’s also not very impressionable—made of unremarkable bronze and a little short—so it’s easy to walk right past. Even one of the tellers at the adjacent Citi bank didn’t remember it immediately. “What statue?” she said. When reminded that there was indeed a statue there, right out the window, she recovered. “Oh right. Well, I don’t think there’s anything special about it.”

Without getting too Barney the Dinosaur here (every monument is special!), it would be hard if not downright wrong to patronize John Witherspoon. After all, people are enshrined into national consciousness for a reason, and part of what’s so great about the less famous monuments in D.C. is the way in which they force us back in time.

Photo courtesy of dcMemorials.com

The John Witherspoon monument takes us back to the days of the American Revolution. Back to when fiery oratory was the norm and the American separatists used rhetoric and any other means to get their independence.

It was Witherspoon who said:

For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged on the issue of this contest; and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulcher, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country.

Thus Witherspoon stands famous as a speaker and as an agitator for independence. Though there were quite of few of these activists, what separates Witherspoon is the fact that he was also a Presbyterian Minister. In fact, Witherspoon was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence (of which he said America was “not only ripe for the measure but in danger of rotting for the want of it”) and the only clergyman during his time in Congress.

Originally, the statue sat in front of the Victorian-style National Presbyterian Church but was left alone when the Church was leveled in 1966 and relocated uptown. Despite the Presbyterians’ wish to move him along, the statue cannot be relocated without an act of Congress.

So today he is flanked by a Citi bank, Starbucks, and the National Broadcasters Association, clutching his bible in his right hand and looking out towards the land he helped create.

Of course, that still doesn’t mean that passerby give him the reverence he deserves. When we asked a young pedestrian if he knew anything about the statue, he shook his head. “Looks like someone important, I guess,” he said, not slowing to take a second look, “If you’re a tourist, you’d probably take a picture of it.”