LINCOLN MEMORIAL

After leaving the Martin Luther King memorial, we continued on to the Lincoln Memorial.

The first idea to build the memorial began in March, 1867; however it took until 1901 before the site was chosen. By building the memorial there, it completed an idea for the open mall area from the Capitol Building to the Potomac River. In the photo below, taken from the steps of the memorial, you can see all the way past the reflecting pool to Washington Monument and the Capitol Building.

 



The 36 Indiana limestone columns around the memorial represent the states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death...

The names of those 36 states are carved in the frieze; the names of the 48 states in the Union when the memorial was completed in 1922 are carved at the top of the memorial.

Designed by the acclaimed sculptor Daniel Chester French, and made from 28 marble blocks, the statue of Lincoln is 19 feet tall and 19 feet wide and sits on a 11-foot high pedestal.

 



A close-up of the detailing of Lincoln's face and hands...

On the walls to the left and right of Lincoln are the Gettysburg Address...

 



and his second Inaugural Address.

One piece of travel advice: Unfortunately the presidential and war memorials are located in areas not close to Metro stops. The nearest metro stop to the Lincoln Memorial is the Foggy Bottom stop, but it is several blocks away. My advice would be to either buy a day ticket for the Old Town Trolley orange tour (we had purchased the two-day tour pass) or try the Capital Bikeshare which has stations right across from the Lincoln Memorial, and very near the Martin Luther King memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.

All photos in this blog post were taken by my husband and me during our visit in September, 2013.