Mt Rushmore Hall of Records
November 24th, 02008 by Alexander Rose
It turns out that Borglum, the man behind Mt Rushmore, also built an underground area behind the giant presidential heads to be a “Hall of Records” (entrance pictured above).
“Into this room the records of what our people aspired to and what they have accomplished should be collected and preserved, and on the walls of this room should be cut the literal records of the conception of our republic, its successful creation, the record of its westward movement to the Pacific, its presidents, how the memorial was built and, frankly. Why.”
- Gutzon Borglum.
It was never completed past the first 70 feet, but a recent effort by the historical society placed a small cache of records there. Rushmore is an interesting case where one man’s obsession (carving the mountain into presidential faces) later became a monument synonymous with national identity. I had no idea there was a “library” like function also associated with it.
This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Clock of the Long Now, Long Term Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on November 25th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I can’t imagine a better place for a national library archive, from the longevity of the mountain to the symbolic relationship between human heads and a collection of knowledge. It’s a shame that it wasn’t complete, but it does stir imagination.
Posted on November 25th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[...] Uncompleted effort by the sculptor of Mount Rushmore to make a great chamber for the ages about the history of the United States of America. [...]
Posted on December 24th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Greetings – In doing research on the Movie “National Treasure 2 Book of Secrets” I discovered the following. No huge room excists behind Rushmore’ as depicts the movie. However, there was a “hall of records” room carved by the sculptor to house records of man’s/society’s achievments – and reportedly these were chisled into enormously large slabs of stone. Has anybody heard of this, and do these slabs of inscripted stones exist. It would be great if some could share some insight. This is Christmas Eve 2009 – so I hope all have a safe and prosperous holiday amidst a drifting world.