Under President Donald Trump’s administration, America’s official 250th birthday party devolved into a series of rather crass and pathetic exhibitions. But on the National Mall, a more subdued event properly commemorated the nation’s long, fraught journey to its semiquincentennial.
Last month, the National Park Service (NPS) opened to the public the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft, an exhibition space amid the 122 concrete pillars that support the famed monument. Until now, visitors only had access to part of this underground substructure—areas housing public restrooms, a small display room with informational panels, and an elevator leading up to where the 19-foot statue of Lincoln sits.
The new 15,000-square-foot enfilade stretches backwards from beneath the topmost steps to beneath the middle of the statue platform. A large glass wall at the rear end allows visitors to look out at the soaring pillars beyond. Historians have found graffiti on their surfaces (drawings of a dog, a donkey, a silent movie star); children may appreciate the calcite stalactites dripping from their arches.
A spokesperson for the NPS told me that while the term “museum” fits, the Undercroft space is best described as “an experience.” Interestingly, it does not have a dedicated curatorial team but instead is overseen by NPS’s interpretation and education team for the National Mall, in collaboration with the Department of the Interior. Visitors can see videos projected through that glass wall onto some of the pillars.
The star of the show, however, is the Undercroft’s inaugural exhibit, which boasts rare copies of iconic documents from Lincoln’s era. These include a so-called “Boker copy” of the Emancipation Proclamation, hand-signed by Lincoln. Organized in 1864 by Philadelphia abolitionist George Henry Boker, the 48 original Boker copies were to be sold for $10 each as a fundraiser for sick and wounded Union soldiers. The version on display in the Undercroft is one of only 27 known that survive today. Another document in the inaugural exhibit is a manuscript copy of the Thirteenth Amendment, one of only 15 known to survive today. (The documents were temporarily relocated from the exhibit on July 16 due to extreme temperatures, and have yet to return.)
At the Lincoln Memorial’s dedication in 1922, the poet Edwin Markham described Abraham Lincoln as the Captain, a figure as towering as “a lordly cedar.” Some 104 years later, this new exhibition space is a testament to the long shadow he still casts. It also shows, as historian Allen C. Guelzo told me, that when Lincoln proclaimed the ideals of equality and freedom as described in these two prized documents, he himself understood it was not “just an isolated cultural moment.”
“Over the last 160 years,” Guelzo said, “we have been living out Lincoln’s embodiment of the Declaration of Independence.” Copies of both the proclamation and the amendment are held in the National Archives and the Library of Congress. In Guelzo’s opinion, however, featuring them at the Lincoln Memorial is long overdue. The memorial’s iconography nods to the proclamation (in the frieze that tops the interior walls of the chamber, Lincoln is depicted signing it). That the text itself is now on view, Guelzo adds, “would please the old boy sitting up there on the chair.”
Other notable artifacts in the Undercroft’s display include the provenance of the Lincoln Memorial construction materials (Massachusetts granite, Indiana limestone, Tennessee pink marble), the tools used to construct the monument, and the many foundational civic moments for which the memorial has set the stage.
It is on the steps below Lincoln’s feet that world-renowned opera singer Marian Anderson performed My Country ‘Tis of Thee on Easter Sunday, April 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution famously barred her from singing indoors in Constitution Hall because she was Black. Here too, in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. indelibly delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. And in 2009, the memorial’s hosted Mary J. Blige, Garth Brooks, James Taylor, and John Legend at the “We Are One” concert in honor of President-elect Barack Obama. Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford has said the memorial is about freedom and hope, and, today, finally, about inclusion too.
It must be acknowledged that for all these egalitarian ideals, the new Lincoln Undercroft has come into being largely through a massive private fortune. Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund manager, contributed significantly to the Undercroft, and the copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment displayed in the inaugural exhibit are on a one-year loan from his private collection.
Griffin, whose net worth is reportedly north of $50 billion, is a polarizing political figure. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently used him as the poster child for his new tax on pieds a terre of the wealthy, filming an announcement video outside Griffin’s $238 million Central Park penthouse. In the 2026 midterm cycle alone, Griffin has given $40 million to Republican candidates. He has also donated over $2 billion to charity.
A Griffin spokesperson told me his hope is to make iconic historical documents accessible, particularly to young Americans. Students can easily peruse them online, but “there is no substitute for standing in front of the original document that changed the course of history,” the spokesperson said.
Certainly, the Undercroft is a meaningful addition to Washington D.C.’s museums. Guelzo, who has a print copy of the Emancipation Proclamation on display in his study, describes it as “the most sweeping, socially revolutionary document that any American president has authored to date.”
“There is nothing which matches the scope, the impact, and the symbolism of the Emancipation Proclamation,” he added.
And yet freedom remains a continuous battle. When the memorial was dedicated in 1922, the South, including Virginia, just yards away across the Potomac, operated under Jim Crow. At its opening, Black spectators were consigned to a segregated section. And today, the Supreme Court is dismantling the Voting Rights Act, revoking hard-won civil rights. The Undercroft reminds visitors of prouder moments in our nation’s history. While other wars of the era were fought over power, Guelzo told me, the proclamation affirmed that “what the Declaration of Independence said in 1776, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, is so close to being sacred that we will spend lives, treasure, and blood to bring a full realization of that to bear.”
