Video: 'Lincoln Memorial Dedication May 30, 1922'
(Tuesday, May 30, 1922, 2:30 p.m. EDT) — The Lincoln Memorial, a U.S. national memorial built to honor the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was dedicated today on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument.
Former U.S. President William H. Taft – Lincoln Memorial Commission president who was then Chief Justice of the United States – dedicated the Memorial today and presented it to current U.S. President Warren G. Harding, who accepted it on behalf of the American people. Lincoln’s only surviving son, 78-year-old Robert Todd Lincoln, was also in attendance.
Video: 'The Lincoln Memorial's History | Flashback | NBC News'
The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address. The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The memorial’s architect was Henry Bacon. The designer of the memorial interior’s large central statue, Abraham Lincoln (1920), was Daniel Chester French; the Lincoln statue was carved by the Piccirilli brothers. The painter of the interior murals was Jules Guerin, and the epitaph above the statue was written by Royal Cortissoz.
