30th May: The Lincoln Memorial

On this date in 1922 The Lincoln Memorial, in Washington DC, was dedicated. It is an American national monument built to honour the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument.

1. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple. It measures 189.7 by 118.5 feet (57.8 by 36.1 m) and is 99 feet (30 m) tall. There are 36 columns which represent the 36 states of the Union at the time of Lincoln's death, and the names of those states are inscribed above the colonnade. The architect was Henry Bacon.
2. As well as the statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln there are inside inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, "The Gettysburg Address" and his Second Inaugural Address. The latter has a typo in it. The word “FUTURE” is misspelled as “EUTURE." Although there were attempts to alter it, the mistake is still visible. There are also murals by Jules Guerin which portray the principles evident in Lincoln's life: Freedom, Liberty, Immortality, Justice, and the Law on the south wall; Unity, Fraternity, and Charity on the north. The cypress trees in the background of the murals represent eternity.
3. The foundations are up to 65 feet deep. The basement has steel reinforced columns covered in graffiti made by the construction workers. It even had hundreds of stalactites. It used to be possible to go on a tour of the basement but not any more because the health and safety people put a stop to it.
4. The statue itself was designed by Daniel Chester French and was carved by the Piccirilli Brothers. It was originally going to be ten feet tall (3m) but was enlarged to 19 feet (5.8 m). So if Lincoln was standing up, he would be 28 feet (8.5 m) tall. The statue is made from Georgia white marble and was shipped in 28 pieces.
5. There are a couple of myths about the statue which are denied by the National Park Service. One is that the face of General Robert E. Lee was carved onto the back of Lincoln's head, and the other is that Lincoln's hands are positioned so that he is spelling out his initials, A and L, in sign language. The second one is actually quite plausible since Daniel Chester French had a son who was deaf, so he would have been familiar with sign language, and Lincoln signed the federal legislation giving Gallaudet University, a university for the deaf, the authority to grant college degrees.
6. A memorial for Lincoln was suggested almost immediately after his assassination and a Lincoln Monument Association was set up within two years. However, people couldn't agree about details such as where the monument should be. Speaker of the House Joe Cannon didn't want the memorial built "in that god-damned swamp,” ie the site near the Potomac River. Washington DC's railway station was suggested as an alternative. There were other suggestions for the design of the building, too. Lincoln could easily have found himself sitting in a Mayan temple, a Mesopotamian ziggurat or an Egyptian pyramid instead. So it was 1914 before they could start building it, and then the First World War broke out, and so it was 1922 before it was finally finished. It cost $3 million to build.
7. Abraham Lincoln's son was present at the dedication ceremony. Robert Todd Lincoln was 78 years old.
8. It is open to the public 24 hours a day. About six million people visit it every year, and it often features in films. Over 60 films have featured it, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, Planet of the Apes, X-Men: First Class, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and Forrest Gump.
9. It was at the Lincoln memorial that Martin Luther King Jr delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, and it has become a symbolic place for the Civil Rights Movement and other groups of activists. Many speeches and protests have taken place there. In 1970, young Americans holding an overnight candlelight vigil to protest against the Vietnam War were surprised when the then president Richard Nixon dropped in on them at about 4am to “talk some sense” into them. Nixon and the students shook hands and had a friendly chat.
10. Until 2008 the memorial was featured on the back of the US one cent coin and it is depicted on the back of the five dollar bill which has Lincoln's portrait on the front.

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