Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial stands at the north end of the Mall.  Here's a view of it from afar, looking from the Washington Monument, past the World War II Memorial.

Now normally there would be a beautiful glassy body of water called the Reflecting Pool in the picture above, but unfortunately they've dug it up to fix its foundations so all we saw was a muddy streak with a few diggers working away. I guess I'll just have to go back at a later date to get the full effect as intended. 

Nevermind, the Greek temple affair that is the Lincoln Memorial was still fantastic and beautiful, as long as you didn't turn around.  Mrs Walles and I made our way there on our first night in D.C. which made for an especially pretty sight which my photography doesn't come close to capturing.

You can just spy the man himself peeking out between two columns.  I returned another day and got this view during daylight.

There are a lot of steps leading up to the building which are hidden by the perspective, though the tiny size of the people in front of the columns hints at the distance from the camera to the top step. Everything about it is oversize and combined with the Greek architecture you feel that this must be a very old building, yet it was only built at the beginning of the twentieth century.  The names of all the states are engraved around the top on the outside.

 

The memorial isn't lit by day but in this photo you can just see the statue of Lincoln staring down towards me (well, actually towards the Washington Monument and Capitol, but it's hard to tell at this distance!).  Here's the man himself, from inside.

He's a big fellow.  I knew Abraham Lincoln was tall, but this is ridiculous!  There is more decoration on the inside.  There are murals up the top of the walls, almost too high to see.  And important speeches are engraved on either side wall.  To his right is the Gettysburg Address.

It's a good thing he kept it short.

I was under the impression (largely from The Simpsons) that people come to the Lincoln Memorial to ask Honest Abe for advice, but all I saw were tourists and Mrs Walles has never heard of such a thing, so it's probably apocryphal.  He looks like he's taking a well-deserved rest (which I think is the intention) so he's probably not keen to dispense advice anyway.  He certainly didn't have an opportunity to rest on his laurels after leading the north to victory in the Civil War.  The poor fellow was assassinated in this very town while the last fighting was still going on further south.

So two presidential memorials down, two to go. Here's the Lincoln Memorial on the map.