Construction of Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial is a monument to the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, standing at the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It was designed by the architect Henry Bacon in the form of a Greek temple, with thirty-six Doric columns for the states of the Union at the time of Lincoln's death. Inside is a large seated statue of Lincoln by the sculptor Daniel Chester French, and the walls carry the text of the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address. The memorial has been a place of national gatherings. In 1939 Marian Anderson sang from its steps, and in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech there.

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