Explore the Construction and site selection about the History of this artwork.
The Scott family selected Borglum to complete the memorial, and the monument's site was chosen by the sculptor and the city's arts commission. Borglum selected the location in 1928 during a visit to Portland with his son Lincoln as guests of Leslie Scott and Colonel A. E. Clark; Borglum believed the city had many suitable sites for the monument and selected Mount Tabor as "... the most poetic, the most beautiful of all". During his visit, he told The Oregonian:Of course, this country is littered with statues of angels and blindfolded women holding balances aloft, but what of the glorious history of this great nation, the greatest nation ever on earth? Our statues should be of the men who made our history. Scott, out here in Oregon, was one of them. The newly-formed arts commission approved the dormant volcano's south slope as the installation site in May 1930. In October, Leslie Scott confirmed the statue would be larger than the original seven-foot (2.1 m) design and The Oregonian reported May 1931 as the planned unveiling date. By then, Borglum had spent three months creating the clay model from which casts in plaster were made, following a series of 30-inch (76 cm) clay models. The molds were shipped to Chicago to be filled with bronze. Borglum was assisted by Ivan Houser, and the sculpture was cast by New York's Kunst Foundry. The Oregonian also described plans for the monument's pedestal and base: The pedestal of granite will be eight feet high and four feet square and will weigh 20 tons. It will have the general lines of the Doric column, expressing strength; with a slight bulge and with fluting on the corners. The pedestal will have a base slightly larger than its dimensions. The inscription will be placed on the granite block. It has not been selected yet.
When the statue arrived in Portland on April 10, 1931, work on the construction of a temporary wooden base had already started. Several days later, the sculpture was displayed on the wooden structure at Mount Tabor's summit to allow arts commission members to finalize the design for the permanent granite base. The statue's exact placement and orientation were determined in February 1932 by the arts commission, members of Oregon's American Institute of Architects chapter, and Leslie Scott, who spent hours testing options. Two temporary bases were used while final placement decisions were made.
York The Oregonian American Institute of Architects Lincoln bronze Mount Tabor