Page:The national monument to Abraham Lincoln.djvu/8

THE NATIONAL MONUMENT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN Congress, and are not yet developed; others have still to look to future Congresses for authorizations and appropriations; but there is little doubt that within a compara- tively few years the entire scheme will have been provided for.

RIVAL MEMORIAL PROJECTS The determination that the Lincoln Memorial should be erected on the Mall, and thus consti- tute one more sub- stantial guarantee for the execution of this great plan, was not reached without a long and hard fight. Important and powerful local in- terests in Wash- ington sought to have another lo- cation selected. There was also a nation - wide and strongly backed demand that the memorial to the martyred Presi- dent should take the form of a highway from W ashington to the battle - field of Gettysburg.

Plans were finally prepared for a splendidly simple and mass- ive Greek temple to be erected on the Mall; and the question between the adoption of these plans and the construction of the Gettysburg Highway was pre- sented to Congress last winter for determination. By an over- whelming vote, that body chose the temple, and rejected, at least for the time being, the highway.

The Gettysburg project will probably be revived, and in time it may be carried into effect; but it will be an independent im- provement, a supplement to rather than a diversion from the noble conception that has been evolved from the dreams of L’Enfant into the plans of Burnham and the assured accomplishment of another generation.

DETAIL OF ONE CORNER OF THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL

The Lincoln Memorial will be in the form of a marble temple of the purest Greek architecture. Its designer is Henry Bacon, of New York. Perhaps no better suggestion of its character and impressive- ness has been given than in the words of the late John Hay, who said:

"Lincoln, of all Americans next to Washington de- serves the place of honor. He was of the immortals. You must not ap- proach too close to the immortals. His monument should stand alone, remote from the common habi- tations of man, apart from the business and tur- moil of the city — isolated, distin- guished, and se- rene. Of all the sites this one near the Potomac is most suited to the purpose.” Mr. Bacon sure- ly had in mind those eloquent specifications of Mr. Hay. He plans first, by a series of terraces, to raise the ground-level at the site of the memorial so that it will be forty-five feet higher than the general grade of the park. To secure this elevation, there will be a circular terrace eleven feet high and one thousand feet in diameter. On its outer edge will be planted four concentric rows of trees, leaving in the center a plateau seven hundred and fifty- five feet in diameter.