Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

          The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall is a V-shaped wall bearing the names of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. The wall can be found in Washington, D.C.   The United States fought in the Vietnam War from the 1959 until 1975.  Vietnam is a country in southeast Asia.

          The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was designed by Maya Ying Lin, an architect.  Lin was only 21 years old when she won the competition for the design of the Vietnam Memorial.   It was built in 1982 out of black granite from India.  The names of 57,661 Americans are engraved on the two walls.  Today visitors to the wall can make rubbings of these special names.

 

Stats:

  • length: each wall is 246 ft 9 in.
  • total length of the Wall is 493 ff. 6 in.
  • number of panels: for each wall, 70 separate inscribed panels, plus 4 at each end without names
  • width of each panel: 40 in.
  • height at ends: 8 in.
  • height at center: 10 ft. 3 in.
  • thickness of wall: 3 in.
  • angle: 125° 12'
  • number of lines per panel: 1 to 137
  • number of names per line: 5 to 6
  • Cost: $4,284,000