Landmark of the Month (May): Obata's Yosemite (Part III)

Chiura Obata was born in 1885 in the Okuyama Prefecture of mainland Japan. At the early age of 5 he showed a natural inclination for drawing, so he was adopted by his older brother, Rokuichi, who was himself an artist. At the age of seven he began his formal training by a master painter in the art of sumi-e, Japanese ink and brush painting. At 14 years old, he was apprenticed to the painter Murata Tanryo in Tokyo for 3 years.

From 1900 to 1903, Obata traveled throughout Japan as he sketched, painted, viewed art collections, and visited temples and monuments. He also studied with famous teachers of the Tokyo Art School as he perfected his classic style. His future and reputation were assured. Yet at this stage of his career, Obata spoke to his father, “The greater the view, the greater the art; the wider the travel, the broader the knowledge.” His father agreed that Obata should travel, and he arrived in California in 1903.

Obata settled in San Francisco, earning his living as illustrator for different newspapers and as commercial designer, but also becoming involved in a variety of new and interesting experiences: playing on the first Japanese-American baseball team in the United States, sketching the aftermath of San Francisco earthquake, working in the grain fields near Sacramento. In 1921, Obata co-founded the East West Art Society, which sought to promote cross-cultural understanding through art.

His big break came in 1932, when he was appointed as an instructor in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He had also gotten married; his wife Haruko ran an art supply store in Berkeley, and offered lessons in ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arrangement, also known as kadō, the "way of flowers"). For the better part of a decade, life was good for the Obatas. But early one December morning, for most of America, life took a drastic turn.

Haruko & Chiura Obata

World War II was a time of tremendous sacrifice and courage by our country. As mentioned last October 31, it unfortunately also contains some of the darkest days of our history.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, created a huge groundswell of anti-Japanese feelings. Racism against the Japanese had been building, primarily on the west coast, for many years, and the US entry into WWII intensified such feelings.
On February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued United States Executive Order 9066. FDR used his authority as Commander-in-Chief to exercise war powers to send ethnic groups, those with "Foreign Enemy Ancestry", to internment camps.

The order authorized the military commanders to declare areas of the United States as military areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded," although it did not name any nationality or ethnic group. It was eventually applied to one-third of the land area of the U.S. (mostly in the West) and was used against those with "Foreign Enemy Ancestry" — Japanese, Italians, and Germans.

The order led to the Japanese-American internment in which some 120,000 ethnic Japanese people were held in internment camps for the duration of the war. Of the Japanese held, 62% were Nisei (American-born, second-generation Japanese American) or Sansei (third-generation Japanese American). Let me repeat that—62% of the people interned were American citizens, imprisoned simply because they belonged to a family of Japanese descent.

Americans of Italian and German ancestry were also targeted. It isn’t as well documented, but there might have been as many as 11,000 German-Americans imprisoned across America, and several thousand were forcibly relocated to Europe.

Internment camp at Manzanar; Eastern Sierra, California.

Notably, there were people in Washington who strongly opposed internment, among them was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (we previously saw her involvement with Marian Anderson in 1932.) She spoke privately many times with her husband, but was unsuccessful in convincing him not to sign it.

The Obata’s flower shop was the target of several random shootings, and the Obatas were forced to close it and cancel all classes.

In April 1942, allowed to bring only what they could carry, Obata and his family were interned at the Tanforan detention center. [About 10 miles south of San Francisco, near modern day San Bruno, Tanforan was one of 17 "Civilian Assembly Centers", where internees were sent before being relocated to more permanent (and remote) "relocation centers". About 8,000 people were kept at Tanforan during the war, and as it had previously been a horse track, the horse stalls were used as housing. It’s now a suburban strip mall, with only a small plaque to remind people of it’s history.] Unable to bring his many paintings and woodblock prints with him, Chiura organized a large sale. With the same generous and transcendent spirit he would demonstrate again and again throughout his life, he donated the sale profits to a campus student fund. His entire life wrecked, most of his possessions gone, his art works sold and dispersed, falsely imprisoned, accused of being sympathetic with the Japanese—with this background, I think it is important to see how Obata responded.

Within a month of being imprisoned, Obata initiated and led a movement that created an art school within the camp. His school had 600 students, funded entirely with their own money and with donations from the outside from friends from U.C. Berkeley. The school was so successful that they were able to exhibit the artwork outside the camp in July.

Obata teaching art at Tanforan.

Obata was sent to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah. In Utah, Obata was the founder and Director of The Topaz Art School, which had 16 artist/instructors who taught 23 subjects to over 600 students. During his internment, Obata made about hundred sketches and paintings, works that serve both visual diary of the internees' daily life, as well as transcendent works that serve as a powerful and lasting testament to the perseverance of the human spirit when confronted by prejudice. The book Topaz Moon, edited by his granddaughter Kimi Kodani Hill, is a documentation of his detention period and the works of art that he created during this time.

Classes at Topaz Lake.

During this time he wrote he wrote, “Nature gives us endless rhythm and harmony in any circumstance, not only when we are on a joyous path, but even in the great depth of despair we will see true greatness of beauty of strength, beauty of patience, beauty of sacrifice.”

Topaz Moon

Obata certainly had justification to be angry, and bitter, and depressed. But his outlook on life and his philosophy was irrepressible. When things looked bleak, he would tell his fellow internees: ‘You can choose to look down at the ground, or you can choose to look up at the sky, the mountains and the moon.”

He found the beauty in nature, whether in dwarfed trees, the colors of the desert, or a scorpion.

In 1945, when the military exclusion ban was lifted, Obata was reinstated as an instructor at U.C. Berkeley. His one-man shows continued, as did his sketching and painting trips in the high country. He continued to teach until his retirement in 1953 as Professor Emeritus. In 1954, 12 years after he was imprisoned for being born in a different country, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

For the remaining 22 years of his life, Obata led tours to Japan, lectured widely across California and continued to “unofficially"teach art and painting close to home. In 1965 he received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 5th Class, Emperor's Award, for promoting good will and cultural understanding between the United States and Japan. He died in 1975, aged 90. Haruko continued to teach ikebana; her last public class was held in Golden Gate Park when she was 93 years old. She passed away in 1989, at the age of 97.

Why is it that some people are able to transcend and rise above the trials and unbearable pain that causes so many others to stumble and fail? How can they consistently see the beauty in bad situations? How can they choose peace and tranquility when everything is collapsing? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but Chuira Obata should be an inspiration to us all. He reminds me of quote by Viktor Frankl in the classic book Man’s Search for Meaning:
"Everything can be taken from a man but ...the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

The artist as an old man.

Come back for a final word about this month’s Landmark in a few days.

Landmark of the Month (May): Obata's Yosemite (Part II)

Obata’s Yosemite tells the story of Chiura Obata, a Japanese-born artist who visited Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada in 1927. His pictures are amazing, and even more amazing is the story of his life and the events that occurred both before and after his trip to the majestic Yosemite. We will examine his trip and his work first, then look at his life in the next installment.

As mentioned, Obata visited Yosemite in 1927 (he had actually moved to California in 1903; more on that later). Unlike today’s visitor to Yosemite, Obata roamed all over the Sierra Nevada, visiting what are now the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area, the Desolation Wilderness, Tuolumne Meadows, and the East Side of the Sierra surrounding Mono Lake. During this trip, he made approximately 100 drawings in pencil, watercolor and sumi ink.

A portrait of the Obata, made by the great man himself, Ansel Adams.

When Obata’s father died in 1928, Obata returned to Japan and stayed until 1930. During this time, he transformed those California landscape watercolors and sketches into a limited-edition portfolio titled "World Landscape Series (Although titled the “World Landscape Series”, the majority of the prints are views of Yosemite and the Sierra). The prints were published in limited editions of 100 by the Takamizawa Print Works in Japan, and are currently very valuable. In 1930, his works were exhibited at the "Eighty-Seventh Annual Exhibition" at Ueno Park, Tokyo; Lake Basin in the High Sierra won first prize.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra

In addition to being a traditional watercolor painter, Obata also produced woodblock prints. Obata oversaw the process of translating his watercolors into woodblock prints, a process that proved very demanding both in the carving and the printing (in Japan, the technique is called “moku hanga”). Some of his designs required as many as 160 separate impressions.

[I find it somewhat difficult to accurately describe the process of creating a woodblock. For example, let’s say you have a painting of a tree on a mountain above a lake. Using a blank piece of wood, the artist would first carve away everything but the mountain, and after applying paint to the remaining flat surface (which now resembles a mountain), would press surface against the paper to create the “image” of a mountain. The process would then be repeated for the lake, again for the tree, etc etc. This is an extremely complicated process, as each new impression required a new carving to act as the pattern for the paint. For a better explanation of woodcuts, click here.]

The resulting woodblock prints look remarkably similar to Obata's watercolors, with lines like sumi brush strokes and areas of delicately layered color. Here is a piece entitled Evening Glow at Mono Lake, from Mono Mills. The original watercolor is on the left, with the woodblock carving on the right.

Evening Glow at Mono Lake, from Mono Mills

On this wall, there are 20 progressive prints, and each print shows the progression of creating the woodcut.

Here is the finished product:

Evening at Carl Inn

More of his images:

El Capitan, 1930

Life and Death at Porcupine Flat

Before Thunderstorm, Toulumne Meadows. In his notes from June 25, 1927, Obata wrote, "The spotlessly clear blue sky that sweeps high up over the mountain changes in a moment to a furious black color. Clouds call clouds. Pealing thunder shrieks and roars across black heavens. Men stands awestruck in the face of the great change of wonderous nature."

You can see the complete gallery of the “World Landscape Series” here.

Obata's Yosemite features 27 prints and watercolors and a series of progressive proofs. In addition, it includes a series of postcards he wrote his wife while in Yosemite, and a collection of his brushes and ink bottles.

Some of Obata's postcards home during his trip to Yosemite.

Brushes and bottles of watercolor paint.

This display is the first time the artist's prints have been publicly exhibited on the East Coast, and it ends on June 1. If you are coming to see it, you better hurry.

Personally, Ginger & I were fascinated as we walked through the exhibit, probably more fascinated than the ordinary visitor since so much of our past in wrapped around the Yosemite area. We had personally been to many of the places Obata had visited 81 years ago; as historians say, we had a connection. As I began to research into Obata’s personal life, I became even more intrigued. Come back next week for the details of Obata’s life—you don’t want to miss it.

The artist, as a young man.

Landmark of the Month (May): Obata's Yosemite

If you are on standing behind the National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue, and you walk north on 8th Street for three blocks, you will quickly reach the front steps of an imposing, monumental building. Like many things in DC, the current occupant of the building doesn’t necessarily reflect the heritage of the past. This building currently houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). This month’s highlighted attraction is not the entire Museum, but one specific section, a special exhibit that is here for a short period of time. But before we can get there, we need to learn a little background on the SAAM building. It’s a fascinating building, and as always, we have to stop and enjoy a few appetizers before we get to the main course.

The SAAM, better known as the Old Patent Office Building, is an impressive building, the third oldest Federal building in DC and was designed in the Greek Revival style by Robert Mills, who was employed as DC’s Architect of Public Buildings. On July 4, 1836, President Andrew Jackson authorized the construction of a fireproof Patent Office on the site. Construction started the same year, and the massive structure took 31 years to complete. Its considerable columns and porticoes were modeled on the exact dimensions of Parthenon in Athens, Greece. After 15 years of construction, in which Congressional committees questioned Mills' competence and insisted on unnecessary design changes, Mills was summarily fired in 1851, and construction continued under the direction of Thomas U. Walter, one of Mills' harshest critics, who was serving as the Architect of the Capitol.

Parthenon (Athens, Greece); US Patent Office Building (Washington, DC)

As previously mentioned, it was originally designed as the Patent Office Building. At that time, US patent law required inventors to submit scale models of their inventions, which were retained by the Patent Office. As a result, the Patent Office required considerable space for housing the models (The building's west wing suffered a massive fire in 1877, destroying some 87,000 patent models). Numerous notable people also served in this building. In the 1850s, Clara Barton (teacher, nurse, and humanitarian; best remembered for organizing the American Red Cross) worked in the building as a clerk to the Patent Commissioner; she was the first woman federal employee to receive equal pay.

Clara Barton, c. 1860

During the Civil War (after the Battles of Manassas, Antietam and Fredricksburg) the building was turned into military barracks, hospital, and morgue. Wounded soldiers lay on cots in second-floor galleries, among glass cases holding models of inventions that had been submitted with patent applications.

The First Rhode Island Regiment, bunked in and among the patent models, c. 1861

The American poet Walt Whitman often visited the building (he referred to it as "that noblest of Washington buildings") and read to wounded men. Whitman continued working in the building when the Bureau of Indian Affairs moved in after the war. He worked as a clerk for the Bureau until 1867, when he was fired after a manuscript of one of his books was found in his desk (the book was Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, and highly controversial at the time for potentially offensive sexual themes. He was fired on “moral grounds”, not because of that crazy look in his eye and scraggly beard).

Walt Whitman, c 1860

I know I’ve spent way too much time over the last two months talking about Abraham Lincoln, but the building was also chosen as the venue for Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball in 1865. It’s a couple of blocks from the White House and ironically, just two blocks from Ford’s Theater.

The next one hundred years saw a large number of governmental agencies occupy the building, including the Department of Interior, General Land Office, Agricultural Bureau, and the Civil Service Commission.

US Patent Office Building, c 1900

In the early 1950’s, the building was slated for destruction to make way for a new parking lot (!), but was spared from demolition by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958 and given to the Smithsonian, which renovated the structure and opened the National Museum of American Art. In 1965 it received designation as a National Historic Landmark. The building is now known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, and it includes both the Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery (the difference primarily being that the American Art section focuses on art about America (as a country) while the NPG is portraits of famous individual Americans).

For a fascinating multi-media presentation of the building, click here:

Now, having laid that foundation, let’s cut to the chase. We visited the SAAM to see a special exhibit that was being presented for a limited time. I had never heard of this artist before I saw a flyer for the museum, but the name of the exhibit immediately caught my eye:

Details of our visit will follow in the next few days.

Landmark of the Month (April): Ford's Theater (Part II)

As I stated last time, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater has connections to at least three other historical sites around DC.

First, it relates to the Peterson House. The Peterson House was a boarding house across the street from the Theater. Fearing that Lincoln would not survive a trip in a carriage, they carried him into a first-story bedroom, where Lincoln slipped into unconsciousness and died at 7:22 AM the next morning. The Peterson House is still open to the public, and you can enter the small bedroom at the back of the house where the 16th President passed away.

Inside the Peterson House

Second, it relates to Fort McNair, a small military post south of the Jefferson Memorial. The Lincoln Assassination was part of a plot to destabilize the entire government by killing the President, Vice-President (Andrew Johnson) and the Secretary of State (William Seward) all on the same night. Eventually, eight conspirators were captured and imprisoned during the trial at Fort McNair, known at the time as the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. On June 30, all 8 were found guilty; four were sentenced to life imprisonment, and four were sentenced to death by hanging. (one of them was Mary Surratt, the first American woman executed by the Federal government).

June 30, 1865

Third, it relates to the large mansion seen on top of the hill in Arlington National Cemetery. The large, cream colored Greek revival style mansion was the home of General Robert E. Lee before the Civil War (actually his wife, Mary Custis, had inherited the property. It’s a fascinating tale; maybe another month will get the whole story.) During the War, the government seized the property, and in a bitter act of retribution against being snubbed by Lee (Lee, a West Point graduate and 35 year veteran of the US Army by that time, was offered command of the Union Army. He declined, stating that his allegiance was with his fellow citizens of his home state instead), transformed their property into a cemetery, attempting to insure that Lee would never again reside there (it worked; he never lived there again). It was eventually transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service in 1933. The beautiful mansion can be seen from downtown DC as you head west towards Arlington Cemetery.

Custis House (now known as Arlington House)

Landmark of the Month (April): Ford's Theater

After last month’s spotlight on the Lincoln Memorial, I was planning on shifting gears and choosing something totally unrelated. However, April is a historically significant month around here (I’m beginning to realize that every month is a historically significant month in DC), and I wanted to highlight one of those moments, which incidentally, is tied to the Lincoln Memorial.

On this day, April 14, 1865, after four long years of the War of Northern Imperialism (what some refer to as “The Civil War”), Abraham Lincoln went to a production of a play, Our American Cousin, which was being held at Ford’s Theater. It was a comedy, which seemed appropriate; the Union was celebrating the surrender of the Confederate Army by General Robert E. Lee four days earlier at Appomattox Court House. (That happened on April 9th; 143 years ago from last Wednesday.)

Ford's Theater; c. 1870

Ford’s Theater is an easy 5 block walk east of the White House; it would be the last walk Lincoln ever took. Halfway through Act III, Scene 2, in the middle of loud laughter at one of the funniest lines in the play, John Wilkes Booth stepped into the President’s private box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. He then leapt from the box to the stage, shouting the Latin phrase “Sic Semper Tyrannus” (“Thus always to tyrants”) and ran outside to his awaiting horse.

(On a side note, the phrase “Sic Semper Tyrannus” is accredited to Marcus Junius Brutus, who first uttered the phrase at the assassination of Julius Caesar. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested in 1995, he was wearing a t-shirt with the phrase written on it. It’s also the state motto of Virginia, adopted in 1776.)

After the assassination, the US Government seized Ford’s Theater, with Congress paying Ford $100,000 in compensation, and an order was issued forever prohibiting its use as a place of public amusement. It was used for a variety of different purposes over the next 75 years, and ownership of both buildings was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933. It’s now considered Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, and despite the order in 1865, is occasionally used as a stage and theater.

Ford's Theater; April 13, 2008; closed for renovations

Unfortunately, Ford’s Theater and the Peterson House are currently closed to the public during a major 18 month restoration period. It’s scheduled to reopen in 2009, so if you are in DC in 2009, be sure to pay it a visit.

As tragic as this event is, it also ties into three other sites around DC. I'll highlight those in a few days. . .

Landmark of the Month (March): The Lincoln Memorial (Part IV)

The Lincoln Memorial has also been the site of some of history's most famous events. I
offer three examples:

1) 1939: Opera singer Marian Anderson was refused permission to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington because she was an African-American. The year before, Ms. Anderson had given seventy recitals in the United States--at that time, the longest, most intensive tour in concert history for any singer. At the suggestion of the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Anderson performed from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939, to a live audience of 75,000, and a nationwide radio audience.

Marian Anderson is greeted by Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the
Interior, at the Lincoln Memorial on 9 April 1939 .

Marian Anderson performs before 75,000 spectators.

You can watch a film of that day here.

2) 1994: After years of separation, Forrest Gump is reunited with
Jenny during a massive protest at the Lincoln Memorial (theoretically,

it was the Vietnam protest of October 15, 1969). You can see where the

jubilant reunion took place, and even re-enact it yourself.

Forrest Gump, looking for Jenny.

And what I consider the most significant:

3) August 28, 1963: An estimated 250,000 crowded the Lincoln Memorial to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr deliver his famous "I Have A Dream" speech as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a high point of the American Civil Rights Movement. A marked tile designates the place where Dr. King stood during his speech. You can stand on the spot today, and get a sense of modern-day history.

Before the speech.

Four days before the rally, King told a Birmingham journalist that he felt his Aug 28th speech needed to be a "Gettysburg Address" kind of speech- noteworthy and inspiring and memorable.

Forty-five years later, here is a brief snippet of the 604 words he came up with:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed --- "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal."

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation this must come true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California.

But not only that ---

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

You can watch it here.

Landmark of the Month (March): The Lincoln Memorial (Part III)

The giant sculpture of Lincoln was carved by Daniel Chester
French, an American sculptor who found his greatest fame with his statue of Lincoln. In the years since he carved Lincoln, a bit of controversy
has arisen over the statue.
Daniel Chester French (1850-1931 ). Obviously, I didn't take this photo.

There is a popular legend (urban myth) in America that claims
that Abraham Lincoln is shown using sign language to represent his
initials, with his left hand shaped to form an "A" and his right hand to
form an "L".

The National Park Service flatly denies both stories. Classical artists
and French historians also claim that this is not true, but consider
these facts:

Daniel Chester French was born deaf at birth. He developed the
ability to read lips later in life, but he was profoundly and
permanently deaf.

In 1889, French created a statue of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and
his first pupil, Alice Cogswell. The manual letter "A" is the whole
point and focus of the statue. This statue portrays Gallaudet teaching
Alice the first letter of the manual alphabet; it's the moment in which
she begins her education. It also led to the creation of Gallaudet
University.
French's 1898 statue of Thomas Galluadet and Alice Cosgrove.

Gallaudet University is a federally chartered,
quasi-governmental university for the education of the deaf and
hard-of-hearing, located in Washington, D.C. It was the first school for
the advanced education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing in the world, and
is still the world's only university in which all programs and services
are specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing
students.

Now for the Big Question? Guess who signed the federal
legislation that created Gallaudet University in 1864? If you guessed
Abraham Lincoln, proceed to the head of the class. Daniel French had
often expressed his gratitude that Lincoln had signed the legislation to
promote deaf education.

It's also interesting to note that this was not the first
sculpture French had done with a deaf connection. In 1881, President
James A. Garfield (a good friend and supporter of the "National
Deaf-Mute College", first as a Congressman and then as President) had
been assassinated. The College commissioned a marble memorial bust of
Garfield and a young, not-yet-famous sculptor, Daniel Chester French,
was selected to execute it. The Garfield bust is on display at Gallaudet
University.

It's not exactly a conspiracy theory, but I'd say there are too
many coincidences for this to be an accident.

Next time you are at the Lincoln Memorial, check it out for
yourself.

Landmark of the Month (March): The Lincoln Memorial (Part II)

If America is a melting pot, then the Lincoln Memorial is a good place to go to watch all those ingredients swirling around together. A trip to the steps of the Memorial will expose you to a variety of different cultures, more than any trip to Disneyland or Yosemite.

I sat on the steps one day for an hour, and saw all the colors of the rainbow in just a few moments.

I saw an African-American family posing for pictures underneath the statue of Lincoln.

I saw an elderly Muslim couple hobble up the steps and study the words of the Gettysburg Address.

I saw a lady from Liberia proudly posing with her son, a naturalized citizen and her grandson, a first-generation American citizen.

I saw Indians and Asians and Native Americans and Mexicans and numerous others, all on a Tuesday night.

Many people make a visit to the Memorial and don't know that there is a historical exhibit underneath the Memorial (along with a set of public bathrooms that are often overlooked!). Enter through a door to the left on the main staircase--it's a well-done exhibit that you don't want to miss.

Landmark of the Month (March): The Lincoln Memorial

There are literally hundreds of monuments and memorials in Washington, DC. Some of them are very well known, such as the Washington Monument, and others are fairly obscure, such as the Titanic Memorial. I wanted to start this series of monthly spotlights with what I think is one of the most significant structures in all of Washington--the Lincoln Memorial.

The National Mall is the centerpiece of downtown DC. Anchored on one end by the massive buildings of the US Capitol, the Mall stretches two miles to the significant anchor on the other end: the square, dominating presence of the Lincoln Memorial.

General info about the Lincoln Memorial: Obviously, it is a Memorial to the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, who was President from March 4, 1861 until his assassination on April 14, 1864. The site was chosen in 1901, but the building wasn't started until 1914 (groundbreaking occurred on Lincoln's birthday, February 12th!). It was dedicated in 1992, and attended by Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe's only surviving child.

While the building is built out of Indiana limestone and Colorado marble, the large statue of Lincoln (19'9" tall and 19 feet wide) was carved from 28 blocks of white Georgia marble by Daniel Chester French, a deaf American sculptor. It has 36 massive columns (each 37 feet high)--one each for the 36 states in the Union at the time of his death. The names of the 48 states of the Union when the Memorial was completed are carved on the exterior attic walls.

The statue of Lincoln dominates the main hall, with the inscription, "IN THIS TEMPLE, AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION, THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS ENSHRINED FOREVER" carved into the wall above his head.

The southern cella (a Latin architectural term for a small chamber) wall is carved with his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863), while the northern cella wall features his second Inaugural Address (March 4,1865). He closes that speech with the famous lines, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Interesting enough, the last phrase (starting with "to care for him") was later adopted as the Mission Statement for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Coming soon: historic events that have occurred at the Lincoln Memoria

The Start of a New 34-Month Project

Ginger & I will be here in Washington, DC for 3 years, and to feed my inner historian and amateur tour guide, I have decided to highlight one landmark, monument, memorial or historical (or hysterical) point of interest each month for the remainder of our time here. I'm sure I'll devote time to the big ones, but I'll also try to go off the beaten path and see some of the less well-known landmarks.

Stop by often, as I'll try to update the Selection of the Month several times a month. If you have a favorite place, or an area of interest, feel free to let me know and I'll snoop around and see what I can come up with.

I also got a new camera, and it's a good excuse to put it to work.