Lincoln Memorial undercroft opens as museum for nation’s 250th birthday
Beneath the Lincoln Memorial, a 15,000-square-foot undercroft will open June 25 with Lincoln-era documents, worker graffiti and new civil rights exhibits.
The Lincoln Memorial is being rewritten from below. A long-hidden undercroft beneath the monument in Washington will open June 25 as a 15,000-square-foot museum space, turning the memorial’s foundation into part of the story and bringing visitors face to face with the concrete structure that has held the landmark above the swampy ground for more than a century.
The new exhibit exposes the memorial’s massive foundations and recasts the site as more than a marble tribute to Abraham Lincoln. It includes original signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, along with worker graffiti, drawings and other traces left behind by the crews who built the memorial. National Park Service officials say the undercroft will also use multimedia presentations to explain how the memorial was built, how its meaning has evolved over the last century and how it became the nation’s most visible backdrop for civil rights demonstrations.
Kevin Griess, superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, said the memorial’s significance above ground has long been understood, but the space underneath has been there all along, carrying the imprint of the people who poured the concrete and shaped the site. The opening, timed to the nation’s 250th birthday, is meant to broaden the monument’s meaning from a symbol of Lincoln alone to a record of labor, engineering, emancipation and public memory.
The project has been in development since 2010 and was described by the Park Service in 2023 as a nearly $69 million undertaking. The work was carried out as a public-private partnership between the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation. It also added or improved visitor services, including expanded restrooms, a larger bookstore and a second elevator.
Timed-entry tickets became available online beginning May 26 at 11 a.m., with visitors able to reserve up to six tickets per transaction. The tickets are free, apart from a $1 service fee, and same-day tickets will be distributed daily starting June 25 at 8:45 a.m.
Congress authorized the Lincoln Memorial in 1910, construction began on February 12, 1914, and the memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922. Designed to honor Lincoln’s role in preserving the Union and ending slavery, the monument now adds a new layer of interpretation at its base, where the hidden infrastructure and anonymous labor behind one of America’s most visited memorials will finally be on view.
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