![]() Gerald J.Stepping through the doorway, you can almost sense laughter and electrifying energy reverberating from the fully restored log cabin walls of the Lincoln Log Cabin. James Loewen, “Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin – Built Thirty Years after His Death!” in Lies Across America: What our Historic Sites Get Wrong Klitzman is a Historical Interpreter at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Pictured: The “Symbolic” Lincoln Log Cabin. And that log cabin is almost completely devoid of any of the original wood! So today, instead of the probably 18×16 cabin in which Lincoln was born, visitors can see a 12×17 “symbolic” version. Yet instead of expanding the building, the architect in charge, John Russell Pope, decided to shrink the cabin. But just as the whole world’s faithful have sanctified the birthplace of Christ by housing it within an impressive Church of the Nativity, so the American people have ennobled the birthplace of Lincoln by housing it within a marble Temple of Fame.” There was only one problem with this “marble Temple of Fame”: when the temple was finished in 1911, there wasn’t enough room inside for the visitors to safely walk around the cabin. As President Teddy Roosevelt said on the day the cornerstone to the memorial was laid: “The rude log cabin in which Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, is a symbol of his bonds with the common people, and it has come to mean to them as Americans what the humble stable in Bethlehem means to them as Christians. To make the site even more impressive, a Greek-style temple more fitting of a bank than a farm was constructed to house the cabin. In 1909 the cabin was moved to the Hodgenville site. But by that point any individual log was just as likely to be from Jefferson Davis’ boyhood cabin as Lincoln’s, and more likely to have been from neither. In 1906, the Lincoln Farm Association reassembled Lincoln’s cabin in Louisville with the pieces found in the storage unit. ![]() However, at one point the logs from the two cabins were intermingled in a single storage space in New York. At one point he paired it with a cabin which allegedly was Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ boyhood home. ![]() The next year his agent James Bingham disassembled that cabin and used its logs to “rebuild” Lincoln’s cabin, assuming the logs from the original Lincoln cabin had been used to construct the two-story one.ĭismayed that not many people were willing to come to rural Kentucky to see Lincoln’s birthplace, Dennett eventually broke down Lincoln’s “cabin.” He then traveled throughout the country showing it off, including stops at the Nashville Centennial Exposition in 1897 and the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Dennett bought the farmstead, including a different, two-story log cabin on another part of the property. Over 80 years later in 1894, speculator A.W. Obviously Lincoln wasn’t famous, so the cabin wasn’t preserved and fell into disrepair. The Lincolns moved 10 miles away from the Hodgenville farm site just a couple of years after Abe was born. Unlike the Cottage, however, the “cabin” today is far from the real thing in which Lincoln lived. Just like President Lincoln’s Cottage, this building has a fascinating preservation story. The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky, includes what the Park Service calls a “Symbolic” Log Cabin. So can Lincoln fans see the log cabin today? Sort of. ![]() In fact, his humble birthplace has become one of the most iconic images from his entire life, appearing on uncirculated coins honoring the bicentennial of his birth in 2009. As we celebrate the 202 nd anniversary of his birthday today, Americans will no doubt think of the lasting image of Lincoln’s birth: the one-room log cabin in which he was born. Though Presidents Day started out to honor George Washington’s birthday, it now also serves as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, born on February 12, 1809.
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