Created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and completed by his workshop in 1908, it was intended by the artist to evoke the loneliness and burden of command felt by Lincoln during his presidency.

Prior to being installed in Grant Park in 1926, the sculpture was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and at the San Francisco World's Fair in 1915.

He also bequeathed $100,000 (roughly equivalent to $3,391,111.1 today) to his executors, Norman Williams and Huntington W Jackson, for the erection of a "colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln" at a location of their choosing.

[7] In 1901 the Chicago city council approved an act for the construction of the John Crerar Library in Grant Park on a site bounded by Michigan Avenue, the Illinois Central railroad tracks, Monroe Avenue and Madison Street (the site of the Crown Fountain today).

[13] The statue's head was used for the commemorative postage stamp issued on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth in 1909.