A giant underground chamber sits beneath Lincoln’s statue. Already renowned for carving the New York Stock Exchange’s pediment and the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village, the Piccirilli brothers carved the slabs in their sprawling workshop in the New York City borough of the Bronx. When finished, the enormous blocks were transported to the memorial and delicately assembled like puzzle pieces with nearly invisible seams. Although French proposed engraving “Piccirilli Brothers” into the statue’s plinth, the humble carvers refused the honor. Six brothers carved Lincoln’s statue in the Bronx.įrench tasked six brothers who had emigrated from Italy with chiseling Lincoln’s likeness out of 28 blocks of white Georgia marble. The statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial undergoing installation c. “It has always seemed to me that the hands in portraiture were only secondary to the face in expression, and I depend quite as much upon them in showing character in force,” the sculptor wrote. French depicted Lincoln with his left hand clenched to symbolize his determination to see the Civil War through to its conclusion and his right hand open to represent a desire to welcome the vanquished Confederacy back into the Union without vengeance.
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Lincoln’s hands carry symbolic meanings.ĭaniel Chester French, who sculpted the 19-foot-high statue of Lincoln for the memorial, invested considerable thought in how to position the president’s hands. The structure’s exterior walls, facades and columns were purposely built to lean slightly inward, according to the National Park Service, “to compensate for perspective distortions which would otherwise make the memorial appear asymmetrical.” 5. The memorial’s walls and columns tilt inward.Īlthough the memorial looks perfectly symmetrical, it’s an optical illusion. “This memorial will show that Lincoln is now regarded as the greatest of all Americans,” the former Confederate officer said at the simple groundbreaking ceremony, “and that he is so held by the South as well as the North.” 4. Congress for nearly 30 years, Blackburn served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Prior to representing the martyred president’s native state of Kentucky in the U.S. A former Confederate officer broke ground on the Lincoln Memorial.Īt the monument’s groundbreaking on February 12, 1914, Lincoln Memorial Commission member Joseph Blackburn “turned the first spadeful of sod,” according to The New York Times. Laying the cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial 3. READ MORE: Check out our Abraham Lincoln content hub, with more than three dozen stories about the 16th president. Although passed over for the Lincoln Memorial commission, Pope later submitted the winning design for the Jefferson Memorial. In addition to his preferred design for an open-air, neoclassical monument, Pope submitted sketches of alternatives that included a stepped Mayan temple with a massive eternal flame on its summit, a ziggurat topped by a statue of Lincoln and an Egyptian pyramid with classical porticoes on each side. In selecting architect Henry Bacon’s design modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, the Lincoln Memorial Commission bypassed several eccentric designs proposed by architect John Russell Pope. Rejected designs included an Egyptian pyramid. Not until 1911 did Congress approve $2 million to build a national memorial. After three years of contentious debate over its location and design and a lengthy construction process slowed by World War I, the Lincoln Memorial opened in 1922.
Fundraising, however, sputtered during Reconstruction, and the project fizzled. Capitol grounds, sculptor Clark Mills designed a memorial tiered like a wedding cake that was cluttered with dozens of statues and topped by a bronzed depiction of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Congress in 1867 authorized construction of a monument on the U.S. The memorial opened nearly 60 years after Lincoln’s assassination.Īlthough calls to erect a national monument in Lincoln’s honor started almost immediately after his assassination, the project dragged on for decades.
Here are 10 facts you may not know about the Lincoln Memorial: 1.
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It has been both a backdrop in memorable movie scenes and center stage for seminal moments in American history such as the 1939 concert by opera singer Marian Anderson and the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. The neoclassical monument honoring Abraham Lincoln is the most visited tourist site in Washington, D.C. It appears on the back of pennies and five-dollar bills. The Lincoln Memorial has been one of America’s most iconic landmarks since opening in 1922.
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