The Lincoln Memorial makes such a strong statement that its construction seems like a foregone conclusion: Of course we’d build a memorial to Lincoln, and of course it would be a flagship monument in the National Mall.
But the story behind the Lincoln Memorial’s construction is a surprisingly complicated one, and it says something about the contortions that, even today, politicians have to undergo to become monument-making visionaries.
The video above tells that story — and shows how the Lincoln Memorial nearly failed to reach completion.
At the time, the National Mall wasn’t the clear park land it is today — it was a recently dredged swamp that played host to gamblers, occasional cattle drives, and even a few dead bodies.
The proposed extension of the National Mall to this area, and the inclusion of the Lincoln Memorial in that location, was hard for many politicians to imagine. Though the 1896 election gave Republicans enough political power to memorialize Lincoln (over the opposition of Democrats), the McMillan Plan to extend the mall faced fierce opposition because it was so unfathomable.
At the center of that opposition sat one of the most powerful speakers of the House to ever hold the title.
Source: Why the Lincoln Memorial was almost never built
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| The Lincoln Memorial before completion |
But the story behind the Lincoln Memorial’s construction is a surprisingly complicated one, and it says something about the contortions that, even today, politicians have to undergo to become monument-making visionaries.
The video above tells that story — and shows how the Lincoln Memorial nearly failed to reach completion.
At the time, the National Mall wasn’t the clear park land it is today — it was a recently dredged swamp that played host to gamblers, occasional cattle drives, and even a few dead bodies.
The proposed extension of the National Mall to this area, and the inclusion of the Lincoln Memorial in that location, was hard for many politicians to imagine. Though the 1896 election gave Republicans enough political power to memorialize Lincoln (over the opposition of Democrats), the McMillan Plan to extend the mall faced fierce opposition because it was so unfathomable.
At the center of that opposition sat one of the most powerful speakers of the House to ever hold the title.
Source: Why the Lincoln Memorial was almost never built
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