Page 89 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Washington, DC

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VISITORS’ CHECKLIST d Lincoln Memorial
Constitution Ave, between French
Practical Information & Bacon Drives. Map 2 E5. Tel (202)
400 West Basin Drive, SW. 426­6841. q Smithsonian, Foggy
Map 3 A5. Tel (202) 426­6841. Bottom, and 20­minute walk.
∑ nps.gov/fdrm Open 24 hours daily. 7 =
Open 24 hours daily. ∑ nps.gov/linc
Closed Dec 25. 7 =
Interpretive programs and talks. Many proposals were made
Transport for a memorial to President
q Smithsonian and 25­minute Abraham Lincoln. One of
walk. @ 13. the least promising was for
a monument on a swampy
Breadline, a sculpture of piece of land to the west of
figures waiting in the bread­ the Washington Monument.
line, by George Segal, recalls Yet this was to become one
the hard times of the Great of the most awe­inspiring
Depression, during which sights in Washington. Looming
Roosevelt was elected and over the Reflecting Pool is the
reelected three times. seated figure of Lincoln in
his Neo­Classical “temple”
with 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
President Roosevelt
initiated the New were poured for the foundation
Deal in the 1930s to so that the building could be
create jobs and provide anchored in bedrock. Architect
immed iate relief during Henry Bacon realized that the
the Great Depression: original 10 ft (3 m) statue by
“…treating the task as Daniel Chester French would
we would treat the be dwarfed inside the building,
emergency of war.” so it was nearly 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
(see p165). Above it is a mural
painted by Jules Guerin depict­
ing the angel of truth freeing a
slave. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
famous address, “I Have a Dream”
(see p99), was given from the
steps of the memorial.

Lincoln Memorial, reflected in the still
waters of the pool

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