The memorial was established by the non-profit American Friends of the Czech Republic, which obtained an Act of Congress to authorize the site, raised the funding, and oversaw the design and construction.

The statue was sculpted from life by Vincenc Makovský,[3] shortly before Masaryk's death in 1937.

The park in which the statue stands today, a triangle surrounded by Q Street NW, 22nd Street NW, and Massachusetts Avenue, was designed by landscape architect Roger G. Courtenay of the firm EDAW.

The memorial includes quotes from the Czechoslovak Declaration of independence, drafted under Masaryk's direction in Washington and proclaimed by him on October 18, 1918 on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia; and from a speech delivered by George H. W. Bush in Prague in November 1990.

Coincidentally, the memorial is geographically close to the equestrian statue of Philip Sheridan, also on Embassy Row, sculpted by Gutzon Borglum who assisted Masaryk in drafting the Declaration of Czechoslovakia in 1918.