The Crypt and National Flame[edit]
Originally the crypt had an open ceiling into the rotunda. Visitors can still see the holes in the stone circle that marked the rim of the open space in the rotunda floor. After Washington's wife Martha had declined to have his tomb set up in the Crypt, his fellows made a motion to instead place a flame there representing the founding values of the nation to be burning eternally: "When the Crypt was first constructed, Congress appointed a keeper of it, and ordered a light to be kept burning continuously within it. This light was not extinguished for over fifty years, and it was not until after the Civil War that the office of 'Keeper of the Crypt' was abolished." [
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