When an event is really sad — and when it isn’t fixed to any particular spot on the U.S. mainland (think Challenger) — its memorial is often built in the District, aka the nation’s official boneyard. That certainly seems to be the case with the Titanic Memorial along the Washington Channel in Southwest, a forgotten monument to a forgotten age, dedicated to a catastrophe itself anything but forgotten.

Unlike other local markers of tragedy, it is pointedly not a memorial to all who perished. Rather, the project was undertaken by American women to salute the “women and children first” ethos that sent captains of industry to Davy Jones’ locker. Prompted by former first lady Helen Taft — who was in the White House when the ship sank — women from around the country sent in $1 each for its construction. Newspapers of the day referred to her as “Mrs. William Howard Taft,” showing that even while doing the menfolk a favor, credit still went to their husbands.

The statue first went up in 1931 at the foot of New Hampshire Avenue, alongside Potomac Parkway, then called Riverside. It stayed in Foggy Bottom for more than 30 years before being removed in time for LBJ to break ground on the Kennedy Center. Today it’s an afterthought, beached on this remote waterway, wedged between concrete box apartments and the disinviting brick wall surrounding Fort McNair.