Lincoln Memorial & King's Dream: The Marble Temple

Why is it significant?

Climb the fifty-eight granite steps of the Lincoln Memorial and stand at the top landing, looking out over the grand reflecting pool toward the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol.

Key Facts

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Climb the fifty-eight granite steps of the Lincoln Memorial and stand at the top landing, looking out over the grand reflecting pool toward the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol. Look down directly beneath your shoes: etched into the stone landing is an inscription commemorating August twenty-eighth, nineteen sixty-three, where Dr. Martin Luther King Junior stood before two hundred and fifty thousand civil rights marchers and proclaimed: I have a dream! Turn around and step into the central chamber: you are looking at Daniel Chester French's nineteen-foot seated statue of Abraham Lincoln, carved from twenty-eight blocks of Georgia white marble. Dedicated in nineteen twenty-two, the temple is surrounded by thirty-six fluted Doric columns, representing the thirty-six states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's assassination in eighteen sixty-five. Look at Lincoln's hands resting on the arms of the throne: French, who had a deaf son, subtly sculpted Lincoln's left hand forming the letter A in American Sign Language, while his right hand forms the letter L, a touching hidden tribute. Turn northeast into the quiet shade of Constitution Gardens toward the black granite of the Vietnam Wall.