When he died in 1827, the entire British Army, by general consensus following a proposal of the senior officers, forwent one day's wages to pay for a monument to the Duke.

When the sum of subscriptions for a monument to the Duke reached £21,000 (equivalent to £2,296,388 in 2023), the committee overseeing the project asked a number of architects to submit proposals, and in December 1830 they chose a design by Benjamin Dean Wyatt.

A layer of York stone slabs at a depth of around 11 ft 0 in (3.35 m) was used to consolidate the concrete, and another was placed at the top of the foundations, as a base for the masonry.

[2] On 7 May 1850, Henri Joseph Stephan, a horn player in Benjamin Lumley's orchestra at Her Majesty's Theatre, committed suicide by falling from the public gallery at the top of the column.

Above the column a circular plinth, then a bronze statue of the Duke dressed in the robes of the Knights of the Garter, by Sir Richard Westmacott.

[7] The column is set at the top of a monumental flight of steps forming a break in Carlton House Terrace, The ensemble was designed by architect John Nash as an emphatic southern termination of his Via Triumphalis from Regent's Park to Westminster, envisaged and mostly realised 1815–1820.