As early as 1852 proposals had been made for a memorial to celebrate the first landing of the Pilgrims at Provincetown and the historic signing of the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor, but it was more than 50 years before the project was realized. The completed Monument rises 252 feet seven-and-a-half inches from the ground and 352 feet over the Provincetown waterfront.

The original proposal was for “plain, rough stone, just as high as possible, which could be seen from every town on Cape Cod and from every vessel, in any reasonably fair weather, coming in or going out of Massachusetts Bay.” In a public competition more than 100 designs were offered and it was finally decided to adopt the form of a campanile or bell tower. When no suitable English or Dutch tower could be found, the Torre del Mangia in Siena was copied.

This was from the book Old Provincetown in Early Photographs by Irma Ruckstuhl, 1987.