Fifty-seven years after President Abraham Lincoln’s death, the nation dedicated a national memorial to him.
The Lincoln Memorial joined the Washington Monument on the National Mall in the most prominent space.
Ten years later, the Memorial Bridge opened between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial- symbolically linking North and South.
When Lincoln died, the Union had 36 states. At the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, we had all 48 contiguous states.
1922- These United States were a year into Prohibition, DeWitt Wallace published the first issue of Readers Digest, and we commissioned our first aircraft carrier.
Alexander Graham Bell died.
Stan Lee, Carl Reiner, and Judy Garland were born.
Robert Todd Lincoln attended the dedication. He lived ten more years, then was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, just across the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
Since then the monument has hosted Marian Anderson’s famous concert, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, and many Easter sunrise services. You can mount those marble steps, turn and look down the Mall- past the Washington Monument to the Capitol dome in the far distance.
Many monuments and memorials have been added since, but when the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922, it established the central view, the essential core of monumental Washington DC.
