Lincoln Tomb

The balustrade extends around the terrace to form a parapet, and there are several bronze statues, reliefs, and stone carvings located at the base of the obelisk.

Marble is used throughout the interior, and several well-known, specially cast bronze statues of Lincoln are displayed in the entrance room and hallways.

In 1871, three years after laborers had begun constructing the tomb, the body of Lincoln and those of the three youngest of his sons were placed in crypts in the unfinished structure.

[4] In 1874, upon completion of the memorial, which had been designed by Larkin Goldsmith Mead, Lincoln's remains were interred in a marble sarcophagus in the center of a chamber known as the "catacombs," or burial room.

[3] Following completion of the restoration, State officials returned them to the burial room and placed that of Lincoln in the sarcophagus it had occupied in 1874–76.

[3] Constructed of granite from Biddeford, Maine,[5] dressed at Quincy, Massachusetts, it has a rectangular base surmounted by a 117-foot (36 m)-high obelisk and a semicircular entranceway.

A bronze reproduction by sculptor Gutzon Borglum of his head of Lincoln in the U.S. Capitol rests on a pedestal in front of the entranceway.

On the walls of the base are 40 hewn stones, cut to represent raised shields, 37 are engraved with the abbreviation of a State at the time the tomb was built.

[6] The interior of the memorial, constructed of marble from Minnesota, Missouri, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Utah, Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium,[3] contains a rotunda, a burial room, and connecting corridors.

A down-scaled bronze prototype by Daniel Chester French of his 1920 statue in the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C., dominates the entrance foyer.

The inscription "Now he belongs to the ages," reputedly spoken by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton at the time of Lincoln's death, is inscribed in the wall above a stained glass window.

[9] Also part of the site overseen by the State of Illinois, and a short distance from the tomb, three war memorials have been erected:

1865 illustration of Lincoln burial ( Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper )
The receiving vault (foreground) and the tomb (background)
The bronze prototype casting by Daniel Chester French of his 1920 sculpture in the Lincoln Memorial is in the receiving rotunda of Lincoln's Tomb. Several specially cast well-known Lincoln sculptures line passageways of the crypt, including one of Abraham Lincoln: The Man
Infantry and Cavalry statues at the corners of the obelisk.
The Art Deco burial room, with red marble memorial monument
Mary Todd Lincoln's crypt in the Burial Room is next to those of her sons.
Gutzon Borglum's head of Lincoln. The nose remains shiny due to the tradition of rubbing Lincoln's nose for good luck. [ 8 ]