Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Artist | Augustus Saint-Gaudens |
| Year | 1908 |
| Location | Grant Park, Chicago |
The Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State statue is also known as Seated Lincoln or Sitting Lincoln. It's a huge bronze statue, about 9 feet (2.7 meters) tall, showing Abraham Lincoln. You can find it in Grant Park in Chicago.
A famous artist named Augustus Saint-Gaudens created this statue. His team finished it in 1908. Saint-Gaudens wanted the statue to show how lonely and heavy the job of being president felt to Lincoln. The sculpture shows Lincoln sitting quietly in a chair, looking far away as if he's deep in thought. The statue sits on a tall base called a pedestal. Around it is a curved stone bench area, 150 feet (45 meters) wide, called an exedra. This whole design was made by architect Stanford White.
This statue might not be as famous as Saint-Gaudens' other Lincoln statue, Abraham Lincoln: The Man, which is in Lincoln Park. But it still shows how much time the artist spent trying to capture Lincoln's serious side. Before it came to Grant Park in 1926, the statue was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was also displayed at the San Francisco World's Fair in 1915. The part of Grant Park where this statue stands was planned to be a "Court of Presidents." But so far, this is the only president's statue built there.
The Story Behind the Statue
The idea for this statue came from a wealthy businessman named John Crerar. When he passed away in 1889, he left money in his will for two main things. First, he wanted a free public library in Chicago, called the John Crerar Library. Second, he left $100,000 (which would be a lot of money today!) for a "colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln." He wanted his executors to choose where to put it.
In 1897, Augustus Saint-Gaudens was chosen to sculpt the statue. In 1901, the city of Chicago approved building the Crerar Library in Grant Park. The plan was to put the Lincoln statue on the library grounds. However, a fire at Saint-Gaudens' studio in 1904 destroyed his early drawings for the sculpture. Luckily, he was able to finish the design and start casting the statue before he died in 1907.
Plans to build in Grant Park faced problems. A man named Aaron Montgomery Ward went to court to stop the library and the Field Museum of Natural History from being built there. He won in 1910. So, the library was built somewhere else. Because of these delays, the Lincoln statue had to be stored. It was kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 1908 to 1913. After that, it was moved to a building in Washington Park.
Finally, in 1924, a spot was approved for the statue in Grant Park. It was placed about 225 feet (68 meters) east of the Illinois Central railroad tracks. The statue was officially shown to the public on May 31, 1926.
Lincoln's Image on a Stamp
The head of this very statue was used for a special postage stamp. This stamp was released in 1909 to celebrate the 100th birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
