The Scott Monument is a Victorian Gothic monument to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. It is the second largest monument to a writer in the world after the José Martí monument in Havana. It stands in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, opposite the former Jenners building on Princes Street and near Edinburgh Waverley Railway Station, which is named after Scott's Waverley novels. Design and concept The tower is high and has viewing platforms reached by a series of spiral staircases giving panoramic views of central Edinburgh and its surroundings. The highest platform is reached by a total of 287 steps. It is built from Binny sandstone quarried near Ecclesmachan in West Lothian. It is placed on axis with South St. David Street, the main street leading off St. Andrew Square to Princes Street, and is a focal point within that vista, its scale being large enough to screen the Old Town behind. Its location appears more random when seen from the south side and Princes Street Gardens, but it dominates the eastern section of the gardens through its scale and elevated position. History Following Scott's death in 1832, a competition was held to design a monument to him. An unlikely entrant went under the pseudonym "John Morvo", the medieval architect of Melrose Abbey. Morvo was in fact George Meikle Kemp, 45 year-old joiner, draftsman, and self-taught architect. He had feared that his lack of architectural qualifications and reputation would disqualify him, but his design was popular with the competition's judges, and they awarded him the contract to construct the monument in 1838. John Steell was commissioned to design a monumental statue of Scott to rest in the centre space within the tower's four columns. It is made from white Carrara marble and shows Scott seated, resting from writing one of his works with a quill pen, his dog Maida by his side. The monument carries 64 figures of characters from Scott's novels, sculpted by Scots sculptors including Alexander Handyside Ritchie, John Rhind, William Birnie Rhind, William Brodie, William Grant Stevenson, David Watson Stevenson, John Hutchison, George Anderson Lawson, Thomas Stuart Burnett, William Shirreffs, Andrew Currie, George Clark Stanton, Peter Slater, Amelia Robertson Hill (who also made the statue of David Livingstone immediately east of the monument), and the otherwise unknown Katherine Anne Fraser Tytler. The stone masons and the Scott monument The erection of the Scott monument came at a