Lincoln Pool Being Retooled From Bottom Up

Visitors to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in the next year or so will notice something missing: the majestic reflecting pool. The pool, recognizable from countless protests, demonstrations, and otherwise momentous occasions, including Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, has been replaced by a large construction site.

The nearly 90-year-old iconic pool has been drained and torn up as part of a $30 million, 18-month replacement project that began in November, The Washington Post reports. Workers are using pile drivers to sink 2,133 50-foot wood pilings down to the bedrock to support a new concrete pool.

The process, employing two pile drivers, is so ground-shaking that monitors have been placed near the Lincoln Memorial as a precaution. National Park Service’s Dennis Quinn said the ground under the pool is 40 feet of river clay and dredging sitting on bedrock, the Post reported.

The reflecting pool, which is about160 feet wide and 2,100 feet long, was constructed shortly after the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922, according to the Post.

Work on the new concrete pool will start in July and require about 11,000 cubic yards of concrete, which truck convoys will take to the site in relays. Quinn told the Post, “We build things here for 50 to 100 years, not 20.”