Building the Lincoln Memorial: The People, Materials and Choices Behind the Monument
The memorial’s familiar form was not inevitable. Exhibits beneath the building reveal alternative designs, construction challenges, stone from across the country and the people whose work turned a national idea into a monument.
Part 3 of Whittier 360’s Lincoln Memorial series.
WASHINGTON — By the time most visitors reach the Lincoln Memorial, the building can seem almost inevitable.
Its broad steps, Doric columns and seated statue have become so familiar through photographs, television broadcasts and public events that it is easy to forget the memorial had to be imagined, debated, engineered and built.
During my June 28, 2026, visit, the newly opened undercroft museum made that process much easier to see.
Exhibits beneath the memorial showed alternative designs, historic construction photographs, explanations of its materials and models of the Lincoln statue. Together, they tell a different story from the one visible from the plaza above: the story of how the memorial became the building Americans know today.
The Lincoln Memorial could have looked very different
The structure standing at the western end of the National Mall was only one of several possibilities.
The National Park Service notes that early proposals included dramatically different forms. Clark Mills proposed a multi-tiered memorial in the nineteenth century. In 1911, architect John Russell Pope submitted concepts that included a pyramid, a ziggurat and other monumental forms.
The design ultimately selected came from architect Henry Bacon.
Bacon had studied architecture in Europe and drew heavily from ancient Greek architecture, particularly the Parthenon in Athens. He believed that a memorial to Lincoln should evoke the architectural tradition associated with ancient democracy.
That choice gave the memorial its recognizable form: a rectangular temple surrounded by massive Doric columns.
But the exhibit downstairs makes an important point simply by showing what was rejected.
The Lincoln Memorial did not have to look this way.
Its appearance resulted from decisions about what kind of building could best represent Lincoln, the Union and the meaning later generations attached to his presidency.
A building intended to represent the Union
The symbolism begins outside.
Thirty-six Doric columns surround the memorial, representing the 36 states that were part of the Union when Lincoln died in 1865. Two additional columns stand at the entrance behind the surrounding colonnade. Each exterior column rises about 44 feet and is assembled from individual marble drums.
Above them, the names of those 36 states are carved into the frieze.
Higher still, the attic level contains the names of the 48 states that existed when the memorial was dedicated in 1922. Alaska and Hawaii, admitted later, are recognized separately on the plaza.
The symbolism therefore works at several levels.
The columns physically support the structure while also representing states joined together. The National Park Service describes this arrangement as part of the memorial’s recurring theme of strength through union.
That symbolism should be understood as part of the memorial’s twentieth-century design language rather than as a literal description of nineteenth-century constitutional politics.
The building was created to commemorate Lincoln and the preservation of the Union. Its architects and artists translated that idea into stone, sculpture and ornament.
Stone from different parts of the country
The memorial is not made from a single type of stone.
Bacon intentionally selected materials from different parts of the United States. According to the National Park Service, the building incorporates Massachusetts granite, Colorado marble, Indiana limestone, Tennessee pink marble, Alabama marble and Georgia marble.
The exterior walls, columns and upper steps use Colorado Yule marble. The lower terrace and steps include Massachusetts granite. Inside, Indiana limestone forms walls and columns, while Tennessee pink marble appears in the floor and pedestal areas. Alabama marble was used for ceiling panels, and the Lincoln statue was carved from Georgia marble.
The National Park Service says Bacon selected stone from different states in part to symbolize a reunited country working together.
That choice is especially visible when the memorial is examined closely. What appears from a distance to be a single white structure is actually an assembly of different materials selected for different architectural purposes.
Building on difficult ground
Before the marble walls could rise, engineers had to solve a less visible problem: the ground beneath them.
The memorial was built on land near the Potomac River where the underlying conditions required deep foundations.
Workers constructed 122 concrete piers extending downward toward bedrock. Above them they built additional supports and concrete arches that formed the base for the memorial floor.
The building statistics maintained by the National Park Service indicate that foundation elements extend roughly 44 to 65 feet below the original grade, depending on the location of the bedrock.
Those foundations are now among the most visually striking features of the undercroft museum.
Seeing those supports changes the scale of the building.
Above ground, visitors see columns, inscriptions and polished stone. Below, they see the engineering required to hold all of it up.
Construction began in 1914 and continued through 1922. World War I complicated the work by creating shortages of labor and materials, but construction continued.
The statue nearly outgrew its original plan
The seated Lincoln figure also changed during construction.
Daniel Chester French designed the statue, but the original planned figure was smaller. In 1918, designers decided to approximately double its intended scale after concluding that the original dimensions would be overwhelmed by the large central chamber. Structural reinforcement was then added beneath the floor to accommodate the additional weight.
The finished seated figure itself is approximately 19 feet tall and 19 feet wide. It was carved from 28 pieces of Georgia marble by the Piccirilli Brothers in their New York studio, following French’s design. The seams were fitted so carefully that they can be difficult to detect in the completed sculpture.
The models in the undercroft make it possible to inspect individual parts of the sculpture at close range.
Upstairs, the statue is encountered as a single monumental composition. Downstairs, the face, hands and chair can be examined separately.
French reportedly studied photographs, eyewitness descriptions and casts of Lincoln’s hands while developing the sculpture. The National Park Service interprets one clenched hand as suggesting determination and the more relaxed hand as suggesting compassion, while also noting that interpretations of the statue have produced a number of later myths.
More people built the memorial than most visitors know
Bacon and French are the best-known names associated with the memorial, but the project involved numerous other artists and craftspeople.
The Piccirilli Brothers translated French’s sculptural design into marble.
Jules Guerin painted the large murals above the two inscribed speeches.
Ernest C. Bairstow carved exterior ornament, state names and much of the memorial’s lettering.
Evelyn Beatrice Longman contributed decorative carving surrounding the inscriptions.
Royal Cortissoz wrote the inscription placed above the statue.
The museum also calls attention to the unnamed or less-remembered laborers who physically constructed the memorial.
One exhibit reproduces drawings left by workers on columns below the building, including simple sketches scratched or drawn onto the structure.
Those marks offer a very different kind of historical evidence from an architect’s drawing or an official dedication program.
They are reminders that monumental architecture is ultimately built by people carrying stone, pouring concrete, carving lettering, assembling sculpture and solving construction problems.
A monument designed to look permanent
The completed Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922.
President Warren G. Harding participated in the ceremony, along with former President William Howard Taft, Vice President Calvin Coolidge and Lincoln’s surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln. Robert Russa Moton, president of Tuskegee Institute, delivered the principal address.
By the time of the dedication, most of the memorial was complete, although work on the Reflecting Pool and some surrounding features continued afterward.
Today, the finished building can give the impression that it has always occupied that exact place in exactly that form.
The exhibits beneath it show otherwise.
Its architecture was selected from competing possibilities. Its materials came from different regions. Its foundations had to be engineered for difficult ground. Its statue changed scale during construction. Its final appearance resulted from the work of architects, sculptors, stone carvers, painters, engineers and laborers.
The monument may have been designed to appear permanent.
Its history is a story of choices.
Learn More
National Park Service — “The Making of the Lincoln Memorial,” including construction chronology, foundation work, materials and the people involved in creating the monument.
National Park Service — “Lincoln Memorial Builders,” with information about Henry Bacon, Daniel Chester French, the Piccirilli Brothers and other contributors.
National Park Service — “Exterior Features,” explaining the 36 columns, state names and exterior ornamentation.
National Park Service — “Lincoln Memorial Building Statistics,” detailing the memorial’s dimensions, foundation and building materials.
National Park Service — “Temple of Democracy,” including several early designs that were considered before Henry Bacon’s proposal was selected.
National Park Service — “Lincoln Statue,” with information about the sculpture’s symbolism and design.
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