Sculpture: The Great Stone Faces

The craggy features of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt blasted out of the face of South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore are world renowned. Less known is a rival of brobdingnagian proportions looming into sight on Stone Mountain, a freak outcropping of granite that juts 700 feet above the plains of Georgia, 16 miles from Atlanta. Subject of the Stone Mountain Memorial: the heroes and leaders of the Confederacy—Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas (“Stonewall”) Jackson.

When completed next year, it will be the largest sculpture in history. Already it more than doubles the height of Ramses II’s portraits at Abu Simbel and is bigger than the biggest Buddha, a 175-ft.-high statue in Afghanistan. Lee’s sabre thrusts 50 ft., and his battle charger, Traveller, travels 141 ft. from nose to tail. When finished, the sculpture will loom 190 ft. by 305 ft., soaring higher than a 30-story building.

Stone Mountain will not produce a new champion, for the sculptor who conceived both it and Mount Rushmore was an American-born Rodin pupil, the late John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. Back in 1916, he took on the Stone Mountain commission from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, at one time considered marching 1,200 stone Confederate soldiers across the cliff. The project went forward by fits and starts. First, World War I interrupted. Lee’s head was finally unveiled in 1924 with a dizzying breakfast for 30 served atop the general’s shoulder. But costs were skyrocketing, and a year later Borglum was fired. Furious, the temperamental sculptor destroyed his models to prevent further work.

The backers next hired Sculptor Augustus Lukeman, who blasted away all of Borglum’s details. Chipping away at Stone Mountain continued for three years, following essentially the grand conception of Borglum, who took himself off to Mount Rushmore. Even the sale of a million dollars worth of commemorative coins could not keep up with expenses. Not until 1958 did the state of Georgia undertake the financing of the memorial, and only two years ago was St. Louis-born Sculptor Walker Hancock taken on to finally finish the grandiose project. There is not likely to be any further delay. Today drillers, directed by walkie-talkies, are using jet torches that burn a kerosene-oxygen mix at 3,500° F. and can slice away as much granite in a day as Borglum’s stone chippers could accomplish in three weeks.