About This Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service has chosen the Thomas Jefferson Memorial as the subject for the 2002 Priority Mail stamp. Dedicated April 13, 1943—the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth—this picturesque landmark in Washington, D.C., is located on the south side of the Tidal Basin.
In 1934, Congress established the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission to plan, design, and construct a memorial to the nation’s third President. The memorial’s design, by architect John Russell Pope, is a circular domed structure based on the Pantheon in Rome. Jefferson himself had used the Pantheon as inspiration for his design of the rotunda at the University of Virginia, which he founded in 1819.
After Pope’s death in 1937, architects Daniel P. Higgins and Otto R. Eggers took over the project.
The 19-foot bronze statue of Jefferson located in the memorial’s interior was sculpted by Rudolph Evans. Panels featuring excerpts from Jefferson’s writings also adorn the interior.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.