What is lying in wait under the Lincoln Memorial? A future museum

While thousands of tourists continue to visit the marble Abraham Lincoln statue sitting at the 16th president’s memorial in D.C., construction crews below his feet are working hard to build a new museum.

WTOP got a sneak peek of the work in progress that will be the Lincoln Memorial Museum.

Crews working on the museum are about half-done with construction according to project managers, pouring thousands of yards of concrete flooring and reinforcing walls with hundreds of tons of galvanized rebar.

The chilly and dark Undercroft now has new concrete which has been poured around several of the 40-foot-tall century-old columns. It will make the museum that will lie directly underneath the steps at the front of the Lincoln Memorial.

The goal of the museum is to share its history without disturbing much of what was built over 100 years ago.

15,000 of the 50,000 square feet below the monument will be used for the museum.

“It’s pretty incredible, and it speaks to how intentional they were about making sure they are preserving as much of it as possible,” Consigli Construction senior project manager Sam Meyerhoff told WTOP.

Ground broke on the Lincoln Memorial in 1914. Designers wanted the memorial to stand out and be seen from far and wide. They also wanted the monument to have the appearance of being built on a hill. However, no hill existed on the site chosen. So instead, they poured a foundation of 122 concrete pillars that stood roughly 40 feet above the ground and was buried deep into the bed rock.

The memorial was then constructed on top of that over the next few years through World War I. Since then, few people since have seen the Undercroft–the chamber under the monument–or the graffiti below Lincoln’s feet, left by the original workers.

“I think for folks who haven’t been down here before, the first time you walk in here and you see this enormous, 40-foot-tall cathedral ceiling with these archways and concrete pillars, it’s something that people just don’t expect,” National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst said.

When the project is finished, it will barely look like anything has changed from the outside. However, inside, the museum will hold artifacts about the memorial’s construction, as well as the historical moments that have happened at the memorial since its completion. Each exhibit will be placed in between many of the original concrete pillars.

“The whole point was to show off those construction methods from the early 20th century and show the foundations and the concrete pillars,” Litterst said.

The museum will sit two stories above the Undercroft floor. Crews will install 20-foot windows that are electrically heated, which will allow visitors to peer down into the rest of the undisturbed man-made cavern.

Meyerhoff said that the heated windows will both insulate visitors from chilly or humid conditions but also prevent condensation, important for viewing what will be projected on the other side of those windows.

“We’re really excited about the immersive theater, the audio-visual program. It’s going to talk about the importance and the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial by projecting images and film onto the pillars,” Litterst said.

The new museum is scheduled to open in 2026, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

“I’ve worked on a number of museums on the National Mall, but this one just hits a little different. It’s over 100 years old. It’s widely known throughout the entire world,” Meyerhoff said. “It just feels really special to be able to be a part of the 250th celebration and be giving this to the American people.”