However, the square's name was changed after Levi P. Morton, the American ambassador to France, established his residence and his country's embassy there in 1881 after abandoning unsuitable offices a few blocks away at 95, Rue de Chaillot.

The subject matter, General George Washington and Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, comrades-in-arms during the American Revolutionary War, was an easy choice.

The sculptor designed the bronze statue, which depicts Washington and Lafayette on a marble plinth, clothed in military uniforms, shaking hands; the French and American flags serve as a backdrop.

On the right side of the base of the monument, the sculptor, René Bertrand-Boutée, incised the medallion of the physiologist, Paul Bert, who was also an early experimenter in anaesthetics, respiration, and asphyxia.

On 4 July 1923, the President of the French Council of State, Raymond Poincaré, dedicated a monument in the Place des États-Unis to the Americans who had volunteered to fight in World War I in the service of France.

Also, on either side of the base of the statue, are two excerpts from Seeger's "Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France", a poem written shortly before his death on 4 July 1916.