How tall was George Washington?

How tall was George Washington?

George Washington stood about 188 cm, or roughly 6′2″, the figure the site uses and the one his contemporaries most often gave. He was never measured in the clinical sense, and no single document settles the question, so historians report a range. Ron Chernow's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Washington: A Life (2010) gives that range as 6′0″ to 6′3½″, and John Ferling notes that he was taller than most men of his era by a wide margin. The commonly used reference list of presidential heights puts him at 6′1½″ (187 cm), one centimeter below the site's figure.

What is not in doubt is how he struck the people around him. In an age when most men were several inches shorter, Washington was the tallest person in nearly every room he entered, and his height, athletic build and reserve combined into the physical presence that made him the obvious choice to command the Continental Army and to become the first president.

The evidence: four ways his height was recorded

Because there is no birth certificate, medical chart or military enlistment card giving his height, historians work from several different kinds of evidence, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

His own word: six feet

The lowest figure comes from Washington himself. When he ordered clothing from England, as Virginia planters routinely did, he described his build so the tailor could cut garments without a fitting. He gave his height as six feet and described himself as slender rather than heavy. Self-descriptions like this were practical rather than scientific, and they tended to round to the nearest convenient number, but they are the only figure from Washington's own hand.

Contemporaries' estimates

Most people who described Washington in person, from fellow officers to European visitors, put him at about six feet two inches. These are estimates made by eye, usually by people standing beside him, and observers often exaggerated the height of impressive men. Still, the consistency of the figure across independent witnesses is meaningful.

The sculptor's tape

The most scientific measurements of the living Washington were made by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. Commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly to create a statue, Houdon traveled to America and, in October 1785, spent time at Mount Vernon with three assistants taking body measurements and a plaster life mask of Washington's face. The resulting marble statue, completed years later and now in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, is described as life-size. It remains the most accurate three-dimensional record of his proportions.

Portraits and the image of a tall leader

Painters reinforced the impression. Charles Willson Peale painted Washington from life several times, beginning in 1772, and Gilbert Stuart's full-length "Lansdowne" portrait of 1796, now in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, presents him standing at full height in a black velvet suit, one arm extended as if addressing an audience. Full-length state portraits were a European convention for monarchs and statesmen, and in Washington's case they matched what visitors reported seeing in person. Paintings cannot be used to measure him, because artists adjusted proportions for effect, but they show how central his stature was to the way the new nation wanted its first president to look.

The final measurement

After Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799, his body was measured for the coffin, and the figure reported in the household's records was 6 feet 3½ inches. That is the source of the upper end of the range. A body measured lying down is typically somewhat longer than the same person standing, because the spine and joints are no longer compressed by gravity, and a 67-year-old man would usually have lost some height to age. The two effects pull in opposite directions, which is part of why historians treat the coffin measurement as one data point rather than the final word.

A giant among the founders

The site's data on the founding generation and early presidents shows how much Washington stood out among the men who built the republic.

Thomas Jefferson, at about 189 cm, was essentially Washington's equal in height and served as his first secretary of state. John Adams, Washington's vice president and successor, was about 18 cm shorter. James Madison, a key ally during the Constitutional Convention that Washington chaired, stood roughly 25 cm shorter, about the same gap as between a tall modern basketball guard and an average man.

Napoleon, whose height is surrounded by myths of his own, makes for an interesting comparison: at about 168 cm he was near average for a Frenchman of his time, while Washington was well above average for an American, and the gap between them was around 20 cm.

How tall were Americans in the eighteenth century?

Washington's height is impressive in absolute terms, but its real significance becomes clear only against the population of his time.

Economic historians have used military records to reconstruct average heights in early America. Kenneth Sokoloff and Georgia Villaflor's 1982 study of colonial and Revolutionary War muster rolls, published as "The Early Achievement of Modern Stature in America," found that native-born American soldiers averaged about 68 inches, roughly 172 to 173 cm. Richard Steckel's work for the National Bureau of Economic Research likewise points to Americans reaching near-modern stature remarkably early, followed by a decline in average height for cohorts born from about 1830 until late in the nineteenth century.

Those findings help explain why eighteenth-century Americans were tall by European standards. Abundant land, plentiful food and low population density meant that colonial Americans, at least those who were free and native-born, were better nourished than most Europeans of their time. Even so, Washington, at about 188 cm, stood roughly 15 cm above the typical American soldier he commanded, putting him in perhaps the top 1 percent of men of his era.

The middle row is striking. American men born in the 1890s were, on average, no taller than Revolutionary soldiers born a century and a half earlier, reflecting the nineteenth-century decline that Steckel and others identified. Only in the twentieth century did American heights climb past colonial levels. Even today, with the average US man at about 177 cm, Washington would stand out as tall: the CDC's 2015–2018 NHANES measurements put the 95th percentile for American men aged 20 and over at 187.4 cm, just below his height. You can check that position with the height percentile calculator.

Strength, horsemanship and physical presence

Height was only part of Washington's physical reputation. Biographers record that he was unusually strong, with large hands, broad shoulders and long legs, and that he excelled at physical skills that eighteenth-century gentlemen prized. Thomas Jefferson called him "the best horseman of his age," a compliment quoted by Chernow and others. On horseback, a tall, erect rider drew the eye of every soldier on a parade ground or battlefield, and Washington's height made him easily identifiable in the confusion of combat.

His early life was physically demanding. He worked as a surveyor in the Virginia backcountry as a teenager, receiving his license in 1749, and he spent the 1750s as an officer in the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, traveling long distances through forest and mountain. When the Continental Congress unanimously chose him as commander in chief in June 1775, his military experience counted for most, but colleagues also remarked that he looked the part of a commander.

His health was another matter. Washington survived smallpox, which he contracted on a 1751 trip to Barbados and which left his face slightly scarred, along with other illnesses over his life. He also suffered from severe tooth decay and lost nearly all of his teeth, wearing dentures made of materials including ivory and metal, not wood as the popular myth claims. These details are part of a fuller picture of a physically formidable man who nonetheless endured the ailments common to his era.

Washington among all presidents

Placed alongside every president since, Washington remains near the top of the list. The tallest president was Abraham Lincoln at about 193 cm (6′4″), followed by Lyndon B. Johnson at about 192 cm. Washington, Jefferson and later presidents such as Bill Clinton at 189 cm and Donald Trump at the site's 190.5 cm fill out the upper ranks.

Modern presidents' heights come from White House medical reports, which are far more precise than anything available for Washington, but they too carry debate. Trump's listed height, for example, has varied between reports. Washington's uncertainty is larger, about 9 cm from the bottom of the range to the top, which means he could plausibly sit anywhere from the middle of this table to near the top.

Does height win elections?

Washington was elected unanimously by the Electoral College twice, so his height had no measurable effect on a contested vote. But the question of whether taller candidates win more often has been studied extensively.

The most thorough analysis is Gert Stulp, Abraham Buunk, Simon Verhulst and Thomas Pollet's 2013 paper in The Leadership Quarterly, "Tall claims? Sense and nonsense about the importance of height of US presidents." Examining the full history of US elections, they found that taller candidates were more likely to win the popular vote, but not significantly more likely to win the presidency itself. They also found that the taller candidate's advantage appeared to have grown over time, and they cautioned that studies using only recent elections can overstate the effect.

The research suggests height is a modest factor at most, and one that interacts with how voters perceive leadership. In Washington's case, his stature was one element of an image, along with his military record, his reputation for integrity and his famous restraint, that made him the consensus choice of a divided nation.

Seeing Washington's height today

The most direct way to grasp Washington's height is to set it beside your own. At 188 cm, he would be about 11 cm taller than the average American man today and around 25 cm taller than the average American woman. You can place him next to modern figures in the 3D height comparison tool, or line him up with other presidents and leaders in the celebrity height directory.

Visitors to Mount Vernon and the Virginia State Capitol can see the Houdon statue and the clothing Washington actually wore, including surviving garments that give a tangible sense of his frame. For most people, the takeaway is the same one his contemporaries reached: Washington was a big man for his time, and that physical presence became part of the national story.