'', sculpted by Borglum in 1908, in
Washington, D.C. A fascination with gigantic scale and themes of heroic nationalism suited his extroverted personality. His
head of Abraham Lincoln, carved from a six-ton block of marble, was exhibited in
Theodore Roosevelt's
White House and can be found in the
United States Capitol Crypt in
Washington, D.C. A "patriot", believing that the "monuments we have built are not our own", he looked to create art that was "American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement", according to a 1908 interview. Borglum was highly suited to the competitive environment surrounding the contracts for public buildings and monuments, and his public sculptures are found all around the United States. In 1908, Borglum won a competition for an
equestrian statue of the Civil War General
Philip Sheridan to be placed in
Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C. A second version of
General Philip Sheridan was erected in
Chicago, Illinois, in 1923. Winning this competition was a personal triumph for him because he won out over sculptor
J. Q. A. Ward, a much older and more established artist and one whom Borglum had clashed with earlier in regard to the
National Sculpture Society. At the unveiling of the Sheridan statue, one observer, President Theodore Roosevelt (whom Borglum was later to include in the Mount Rushmore portrait group), declared that it was "first rate"; a critic wrote that "as a sculptor Gutzon Borglum was no longer a rumor, he was a fact". President
Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on May 3, 1934, dedicating a statue of
William Jennings Bryan created by Borglum. This Bryan statue by Borglum originally stood in Washington, D.C., but was later displaced by highway construction and moved by an Act of Congress in 1961 to
Salem, Illinois, Bryan's birthplace. In 1925, the sculptor moved to Texas to work on the monument to trail drivers commissioned by the Trail Drivers Association. He completed the model in 1925, but due to lack of funds it was not cast until 1940, and then was only a fourth its originally planned size. It stands in front of the Texas Pioneer and Trail Drivers Memorial Hall next to the
Witte Museum in
San Antonio. Borglum lived at the historic
Menger Hotel, which in the 1920s was the residence of a number of artists. He subsequently planned the redevelopment of the Corpus Christi waterfront; the plan failed, although a model for a statue of Christ intended for it was later modified by his son and erected on a mountaintop in South Dakota. While living and working in Texas, Borglum took an interest in local beautification. He promoted change and modernity, although he was berated by academicians.
Stone Mountain , 1925 (design by Borglum) Borglum was initially involved in the carving of
Stone Mountain in
Georgia. Borglum's
nativist stances made him seem an ideologically sympathetic choice to carve a memorial to heroes of the
Confederate States of America, planned for
Stone Mountain, Georgia. In 1915, coinciding with the Klan-glorifying, highly successful
The Birth of a Nation, he was approached by the
United Daughters of the Confederacy with a project for sculpting a high bust of General
Robert E. Lee on the mountain's rockface. Borglum accepted, but told the committee, "Ladies, a twenty-foot head of Lee on that mountainside would look like a postage stamp on a barn door." Borglum's ideas eventually evolved into a high relief
frieze of Lee,
Jefferson Davis, and
Stonewall Jackson riding around the mountain, followed by a legion of artillery troops. Borglum agreed to include a
Ku Klux Klan altar in his plans for the memorial to acknowledge a request of Helen Plane in 1915, who wrote to him: "I feel it is due to the KKK that saved us from Negro domination and
carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain". After a delay caused by
World War I, Borglum and the newly chartered Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association set to work on this monument, the largest ever attempted. Many difficulties slowed progress, some because of the sheer scale involved. After finishing the detailed model of the carving, Borglum was unable to trace the figures onto the massive area on which he was working, until he developed a gigantic
magic lantern to project the image onto the side of the mountain. Carving officially began on June 23, 1923, with Borglum making the first cut. At Stone Mountain he developed sympathetic connections with the reorganized Ku Klux Klan, who were major financial backers of the monument. Lee's head was unveiled on Lee's birthday January 19, 1924, to a large crowd, but soon thereafter Borglum was increasingly at odds with the officials of the organization. His domineering, perfectionist, authoritarian manner brought tensions to such a point that in March 1925 Borglum smashed his clay and plaster models. He left Georgia permanently, his tenure with the organization over. None of his work remains, as it was all blasted off the mountain's face for the work of Borglum's replacement
Henry Augustus Lukeman. In his abortive attempt, however, Borglum had developed the necessary techniques for sculpting on a gigantic scale that made Mount Rushmore possible.
Mount Rushmore , located in the
Black Hills of
South Dakota His Mount Rushmore project, 1927–1941, was the brainchild of South Dakota state historian
Doane Robinson. His first attempt with the face of
Thomas Jefferson had to be redone when it was determined that there was not enough stone to complete it. Dynamite was used to remove large areas of rock from under Washington's brow. The initial pair of presidents,
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was soon joined by
Abraham Lincoln and
Theodore Roosevelt. Ivan Houser, father of
John Sherrill Houser, was assistant sculptor to Gutzon Borglum in the early years of carving; he began working with Borglum shortly after the inception of the monument and was with Borglum for a total of seven years. When Houser left Gutzon to devote his talents to his own work, Gutzon's son, Lincoln, took over as assistant sculptor to his father. Borglum alternated exhausting on-site supervising with world tours, raising money, polishing his personal legend, sculpting a
Thomas Paine memorial for Paris and a
Woodrow Wilson memorial for
Poznań, Poland (1931). In his absence, work at Mount Rushmore was overseen by Bill Tallman and later his son,
Lincoln Borglum. During the Rushmore project, father and son were residents of Beeville, Texas. When he died in Chicago, following complications of surgery, his son finished another season at Rushmore, but left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction.
Other works silver baron
John William Mackay (1831–1902),
Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering,
University of Nevada, Reno (1908) , Borglum, 1919,
University of Virginia in
Henry Mall in front of
Agriculture Hall,
University of Wisconsin-Madison (1922) In 1909, the sculpture
Rabboni was created as a grave site for the Ffoulke Family in Washington, D.C., at
Rock Creek Cemetery. Four public works by Borglum are in
Newark, New Jersey:
Seated Lincoln (1911),
Indian and the Puritan (1916),
Wars of America (1926), and a
stele with bas-relief,
First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark (1916). No other U.S. city holds as many public displays by Borglum. In 1912, the
Nathaniel Wheeler Memorial Fountain, designed by Borglum, was dedicated in
Bridgeport, Connecticut. A memorial to
Robert Louis Stevenson at Baker Cottage,
Saranac Lake, New York, was unveiled in 1915. In 1916, he overhauled the design of the torch for the
Statue of Liberty in New York City. In 1918, he was one of the drafters of the
Czechoslovak declaration of independence. One of Borglum's more unusual pieces is
The Aviator, completed in 1919 as a memorial for
James Rogers McConnell, who was killed in World War I while flying for the
Lafayette Escadrille. It is located on the grounds of the
University of Virginia in
Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1922, he crafted the
William Dempster Hoard Sculpture in the north end what is now the
Henry Mall Historic District at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. His statue of Collis P. Huntington was completed in 1924 and stands at the entrance of the CSX Huntington headquarters building located in the 900 block of Seventh Avenue,
Huntington, West Virginia. His
statue of Harvey W. Scott was completed in 1933 and stood at the peak of
Mount Tabor, Portland, Oregon, until it was toppled by protestors in 2020. Borglum sculpted the
Memorial to the "Start Westward of the United States", which is located in
Muskingum Park,
Marietta, Ohio (1938). The work was featured on a 1938 3¢ US postage stamp. He built the statue of
Daniel Butterfield at
Sakura Park in Manhattan (1918). He created a memorial to
Sacco and Vanzetti (1928), a plaster cast of which is now in the Boston Public Library. Another Borglum design is the
North Carolina Monument on
Seminary Ridge at the
Gettysburg Battlefield in south-central
Pennsylvania. The cast bronze sculpture depicts a wounded
Confederate officer encouraging his men to push forward during
Pickett's Charge. Borglum had also made arrangements for an airplane to fly over the monument during the dedication ceremony on July 3, 1929. During the sculpture's unveiling, the plane scattered roses across the field as a salute to those North Carolinians who had fought and died at Gettysburg. In 1939 when German troops marched into Poland, they destroyed Borglum's statue of
Woodrow Wilson located in
Poznań. == Death ==