In His Memory

The corner stone to the Lincoln Memorial was laid on February 12th 1914, on the National Mall in Washington, DC.


The Lincoln Memorial built to honor President Abraham Lincoln, is located in Washington, DC. The statue of Lincoln in the memorial was created by Daniel Chester French, the building designed by architect Henry Bacon and the murals inside painted by Jules Guerin. Although the Memorial wasn’t built until the Twentieth century, one was being talked about since his death, begin in 1867 when Congress passed the first of many bills commissioning a monument to Lincoln. This first monument was designed by Clark Mills, and called for a seventy foot structure with six equestrian and thirty-one pedestrian statues, topped by a twelve foot high statue of Lincoln. Due to insufficient founds the project faltered.

Finally after five bills to congress were defeated, Senator Shelby M Cullom of Illinois got Senate Bill 9449 passed in 1910. The next year the Lincoln Memorial Commission had their first meeting. There were issues with many of the Commission’s choices of location and design. In 1913 Congress gave its approval and allocated $300,000 for the project. A small dedication ceremony was conducted for the ground breaking on February 12th 1914, with construction beginning a month latter. Despite several changes to the design, the memorial was done on the scheduled finish date of Memorial Day 1922. William H Taft dedicated the Memorial and presented it to President Warren G Harding who accepted for the American people. Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert who was 79 at the time was in attendance.