Lincoln Presidential Library
Opening Delayed
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield will not be open for Lincoln’s Birthday February 12, or even for Presidents’ Day February 17, according to state officials overseeing its construction. Mia Jazo Harris of the Capital Development Board said that the automation system isn’t ready and that more work needs to be done on some wood flooring and paneling and on the decorative Egyptian limestone that covers the exterior, the Springfield State Journal-Register reported February 3.
Once construction is finished, it will take about six weeks for the Lincoln materials owned by the State Historical Library to be moved in. The library was formally dedicated November 18 in a televised, invitation-only celebration.
The Lincoln Library is still without a top administrator. A panel appointed by former Gov. George Ryan had recommended Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, chief communications officer of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for appointment as executive director, but Holzer has withdrawn his name from consideration. “It now appears, for a variety of reasons,” he said in the February 6 Chicago Sun-Times, “to be evolving into something considerably less than I was initially promised.”
Posted February 10, 2003.
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