Lincoln Sculpture Gets a New Home

04/09/2010

The bronze sculpture of a young Abraham Lincoln on horseback that has graced the ESF campus for more than 30 years was moved April 9 to a prominent location outside Bray Hall.

The statue was sculpted by Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973), who depicted Lincoln as a young lawyer riding the circuit. He is engrossed in a book while his horse nibbles some grass.

The 5,000-pound statue, and its 10,000-pound concrete base, was moved from its previous location outside Walters Hall as part of a project that will create a roadway between Bray and Walters halls. The project will also provide parking during the construction of the planned Gateway Building, which will be located in what is now the parking lot behind Moon Library. The statue is now near the northwest corner of Bray Hall, across the street from the Carrier Dome.

The statue, called "On the Circuit," is not Anna Huntington's only link to ESF. She and her husband, Archer Huntington, donated about 15,000 acres of land in the Adirondacks for use by ESF in the 1930s. That land is now the Adirondack Ecological Center. Their house, Huntington Lodge (a William West Durant camp) was recently restored to its original Great Camp look.