Abe Goes To The Fair II: Insult and Injury

Louis Slobodkin's statue of the young Lincoln, known variously as The Rail Joiner and Unity, was the runner-up in a government sponsored competition for a sculpture to grace the grounds of the Federal Building at The Fair. By his own account, Slobodkin spent a year creating the 15-foot-high steel-and-plaster statue, which cost the federal government somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000.

Slobodkin at work on The Fair statue

On or shortly before opening day of The Fair, however, understandably proud of and eager to show his wife his accomplishment, Slobodkin searched the grounds in vain: much to his chagrin and displeasure, his Lincoln was nowhere to be found.

Subsequent inquiry revealed that the statue had been not only removed from its location, but smashed! Smashed by order of Theodore T. Hayes, executive assistant to the United States Commissioner for The Fair, apparently acting on the suggestion of a female luncheon companion (left nameless, but pointedly identified as a blonde by several contemporary news sources) who thought the statue in poor taste. Oddly enough, Hayes's boss, Edward J. Flynn, had reportedly sat on the jury that had selected the winning submissions in the first place! (Conflicting reports place the blame for the statue's fate directly with Flynn himself.)

Though The New York Times reported that Fair officials were under no obligation to exhibit works of art for which they had paid (and which they therefore owned), the government, after a considerable amount of bad press regarding the incident, settled the matter by returning Slobodkin's original, smaller-scale maquette and commissioning from him another copy of the statue, this time to the tune of $1600.

A seven-and-a-half-foot cast (half the size of the one intended for The Fair) was quickly produced and placed...in an out-of-the-way basement courtyard of the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. On view since August 1939, the statue can still be seen today. But it certainly deserves better.

Above, the Slobodkin statue in its current location at the US Deaprtment of the Interior Buidilng

Another copy of the statue was cast and placed in Lincoln, Nebraska in 2000.

Abe Goes To The Fair

Though not created for The Fair, Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Abraham Lincoln: The Man (aka Standing Lincoln) was displayed at The Fair as part of the Illinois exhibit. Not surprisingly, the Saint-Gaudens Lincoln was one of a number of sculptures (I know of at least 4) depicting the 16th president, both at the Illinois exhibit and throughout The Fair.

The Fair statue was an artist-authorized reduction (one of only sixteen known to exist, and one of the first two produced) of the original, created for Chicago’s Lincoln Park in 1887. I am quite certain that the cast exhibited at The Fair is now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

According to the Met's press release, the bronze, acquired from a private collector, was originally owned by Clara Stone Hay, the widow of Lincoln’s onetime private assistant secretary, John M. Hay. The note on the back of the photo of the statue in the New York Public Library's Fair collection (below) indicates that it was lent by the children of John and Clara Hay. So, unless the Hays had several casts of the statue (which is unlikely), the Met statue is the one exhibited at The Fair.