Located in front of Healy Hall, on university's campus in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the statue consists of a bronze sculpture of Carroll on top of a granite pedestal.

Thomas Walsh delivered an ode, and Daniel William O'Donoghue gave a history of the society and a tribute to the life of John Carroll.

This secret was kept until 1940, when Brother James Harrington, the overseer of campus workers in 1912, revealed it to the university's student newspaper, The Hoya.

[7] At the unveiling, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White formally presented the statue on behalf of the National Alumni Association, which financed the project.

[10] In his speech—which was said to have had a profound impact on Edmund A. Walsh (the founder of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service), who was in attendance—White commented on the connection between John Carroll and his brother, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and on the common Christian principles that underlie the founding of Georgetown University and the United States.

[7] Additional speeches were made by: the Archbishop of Baltimore,[a] Cardinal James Gibbons; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Champ Clark; the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Ambassador Baron Hengelmuller; the Attorney General, George W. Wickersham; the president of the National Alumni Association and chairman of the statue's ways and means committee,[12] George E. Hamilton; and the President of Georgetown University, Alphonsus J. Donlon.

President William Howard Taft was supposed to speak at the ceremony but cancelled to attend a memorial service for his close aide who died on the Titanic, sending Wickersham in his stead.

Joseph Hanselman, the provincial of the Jesuit province of Maryland and New York; Monsignor John Joyce Russell, the pastor of St. Patrick's Church; Harry M. Clabaugh, the Dean of Georgetown Law Center; and four former university presidents: J. Havens Richards, John D. Whitney, Jerome Daugherty, and Joseph J.

Senator-elect Joseph E. Ransdell, John G. Agar, Chief Justice Seth Shepard, and Dr. William Creighton Woodward also made statements.

Terence J. Shealy made a speech about Carroll's influence on the Constitution's prohibition of religious tests for public office under Article VI.

[14] The bronze sculpture depicts John Carroll, seated in a chair and resting his hands on its arms as he gazes slightly to his right,[15] toward the front gates and out onto the Potomac River and downtown Washington.