The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘TOFINISHTHEWORK HESONOBLYBEGAN’
Washington’s first Abraham Lincoln memorial was a statue set up in front of the District City Hall building (right) in 1868, just three years after Lincoln’s assassination. As early as 1867, Congress passed a bill creating a commission to build a fitting memorial for the fallen president. That resulted in a plan for a huge, 70-foot monument decorated with 38 statues. The project eventually lost support.
In 1901, a citywide park commission called for reclaiming land along the Potomac River and placing a monument there, along the same axis with the Washington Monument and the Capitol. A consensus formed to make that spot (right) the home to a Lincoln memorial.
A plan was put into place in 1915 for a Greek temple-style structure containing a statue of Lincoln. Originally, the statue was to be 10 feet tall but that was nearly doubled to 19 feet when planners realized it might be dwarfed by the enormous interior of the building. If the likeness of Lincoln was standing, he would be 28 feet tall. The statue (right) was designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French, who oversaw six Italian brothers who carved French’s creation out of Georgia White Marble. Rumors persist that the face of Robert E. Lee is sculpted into the back of Lincoln’s head and that his hands spell out “A” and “L” in American Sign Language. Neither of these is true.
The Lincoln Memorial — built on the reclaimed west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to honor the nation’s 16th president — turns 100 on May 30. The monument was aimed at healing the division the nation still felt in 1922 as a result of the Civil War.
A FITTING MEMORIAL FOR ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The 99-foot-tall monument features 36 fluted Doric columns — one for each state at the time of Lincoln’s death. The columns (left) are slanted slightly toward the center of the building to help fight the optical illusion that the perfectly straight columns are bulging outward. Ancient Greek builders had used that same trick.
At the last minute, a bronze and glass wall was removed from the design to make the memorial an open-air building.
More than 50,000 people gathered to watch the dedication ceremony on May 30, 1922. “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” said the keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Russa Moton, president of Tuskegee Institute. “We dedicate ourselves and our posterity, with you and yours, to finish the work which he so nobly began — to make America an example for all the world of equal justice and equal opportunity for all.”
Ironically, prominent African Americans invited to the ceremony found themselves herded into a segregated section guarded by U.S. Marines. Even Moton was not allowed to sit on the platform with the other speakers.