Many proposals were made for a memorial to President Abraham Lincoln. One of the least promising was for a monument on a swampy piece of land to the west of the Washington Monument. Yet this was to become one of the most awe-inspiring sights in Washington. Looming over the Reflecting Pool is the seated figure of Lincoln in his Neoclassical temple, which has 36 Doric columns, one for each state at the time of Lincoln’s death.

Before the monument could be built in 1914, the site had to be drained. Solid concrete piers were poured for the foundation so that the building could be anchored in bedrock. Architect Henry Bacon realized that the original 3-metre statue by Daniel Chester French would be dwarfed inside the building, so it was doubled in size. As a result it had to be carved from 28 blocks of white marble.

Engraved on the south wall is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Above it is a mural painted by Jules Guerin depicting the angel of truth freeing a slave. This was the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous address, “I Have a Dream”