Daniel Chester French: The Lincoln Memorial, Pt. 2

The Piccirilli brothers lifting the left 
hand of the Lincoln statue into place. 

"The Piccirilli Brothers were awarded the contract to cut the Lincoln in marble from the plaster model. The great size - it is, I believe, the largest marble statue in existence - made it necessary to build it up from twenty pieces of stone. It is a proof of the accuracy with which the copying was done that, although the pieces were cut separately and were not assembled until put together on the pedestal in the Memorial, they fit together as perfectly as if carved from one block and sawn apart.

Mr. Bacon and the young architects in his office worked for some ten years upon the plans. Once given the order it had become the absorbing object, the inspiration of his life. He took but small interest in other work, his whole mind seeming to concentrate upon the gradual evolving of this monument, as well as to the idea of abstract beauty for which it stands.

A year after its completion he died at the age of fifty-eight. His friend Dan French said of him, at the time, that it seemed as if Bacon had been created for the sole purpose of making the Lincoln Memorial; that he had achieved a reputation for monumental work when the commission was given him; that after its achievement it would have been difficult for him to go back to more commonplace work; that, his great work finished, it seemed almost part of the scheme that he should pass on.

Great honor was conferred upon him. The greatest of these, and indeed the greatest ever conferred upon an architect in America, was when the Institute of Architects presented its medal to him at a dinner which concluded the Annual Meeting of the Institute in Washington, May 18, 1923. The dinner, attended by five hundred members and guests, was held in a great marquee at the east end of the Lagoon in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and at its close there was a beautiful pageant. Bacon, attended by the President of the Institute, guests of honor, and special guests, embarked upon a barge in the Lagoon and this, escorted by the members in costume upon either bank, was rowed down to the steps of the Memorial, which was effectively illuminated for the occasion. Here President Harding awaited them, and, introduced by Chief Justice Taft, the Permanent Chairman of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, he presented to Henry Bacon, with an appropriate address, the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects - 'the highest honor within its power to give.' Mr. Cortissoz referred to Henry Bacon as 'an embodied conscience.'" 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.)