At the Lincoln Memorial, a family affair
The Feb. 20 Metro article about the construction of the new Lincoln Memorial visitor center, “Exhibit space to be built under Lincoln Memorial,” missed the cogent and compellingly coincidental fun fact about sculptor Daniel Chester French and his equally significant father, Henry Flagg French. This father-son “tag team” was fundamentally and integrally a part of that significant memorial. Henry Flagg French was the inventor of the ingenious and ubiquitous French drain. Daniel Chester French, of course, was the sculptor of that magnificent seated Abraham Lincoln within the memorial’s “temple.”
Installation of a French drain around the perimeter of the Lincoln Memorial due to its formerly swampy location was a significant feature of its original construction, and its restoration was one of the first phases of the visitor center construction now underway. This family connection is an extraordinary detail about the memorial’s history.