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Lot 26
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Borglum to FDR, Fantastic Mount Rushmore Letter
Borglum to FDR, Fantastic Mount Rushmore Letter
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Description:

Borglum Gutzon

 

Borglum to FDR, Fantastic Mount Rushmore Letter

 

In this important and intriguing letter, famed sculptor Gutzon Borglum writes to President Roosevelt seeking assistance in completing his magnum opus, the Presidential carvings on Mount Rushmore. Borglum asks Roosevelt to reconstruct the governing federal commission; appoint a resident executive officer; cut through red tape preventing his receiving a surplus Navy diesel engine to generate power; authorize a lift for the workers, so they do not have to climb to work every day; compensate him for having to forego other sculpting work because of the lack of trained assistants; and detail soldiers to guard the memorial against vandalism until it is completed.

 

GUTZON BORGLUM, Typed Letter Signed, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 15, 1935. 5 pp., 8.5" x 11". Holes punched in sides and top; adhesive residue on left side of first page, not affecting text.

 

Excerpts:

"This is to inform you that conditions exist at Mount Rushmore that demand immediate and constructive correction, and that local interferences be removed so that the work may be continued to a proper completion of the great memorial." (p1)

 

"Under President Coolidge's administration and upon his initiative I worked out with him a plan for carrying on the colossal memorial to our civilization as a Federal project to be controlled by the National Administration assisted financially by a 50% private or State aid, - the State of South Dakota had not and never has appropriated a dollar to this work!" (p1)

 

"I may tell you, Mr. President...the direct effect of the Senator's action was immediately felt in South Dakota and resulted in the establishment of a petty political racket extending through finances, the purchasing of all materials, embarrassing my assistants, forcing upon me incompetent men, working with inefficient machinery, and every sort of local impractical methods." (p2)

 

"Ridiculous as the following may seem, the great work that has been accomplished at Mount Rushmore...has been carried to its present state of perfection without the contractual assistance of trained aides, without trained sculptor assistants, without the assistance of engineers, and even without the assistance of men capable of giving intelligent directions to men, and also without the aid of any trained stonecutters...." (p3)

 

"Dilatory methods, inefficiency, ignorance, mismanagement, as you know, are more expensive than actual criminal interference, and Mount Rushmore's work has been subject to that from the beginning." (p3)

 

"The above handicaps, total loss to me of informed assistants, which is a part of my consideration in my contract, have necessitated my personal presence at Rushmore and obliged me to take over the entire direction of the work in every detail, abandon all other work, inflicting so severe a loss upon me and added expense I cannot continue to maintain." (p3-4)

 

"The monument is now rated as one of the most extraordinary sights in the Northwest; last year it was visited by 180,000 people; 55,000 automobiles." (p5)

 

Historical Background

In 1923, South Dakota historian Doane Robinson conceived the idea of giant carvings in the Black Hills to promote tourism in South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose Mount Rushmore because it had the exposed granite to support sculpting and faced southeast with maximum exposure to the sun. The project received Congressional approval in March 1925 and began in October 1927. Initial estimates were that the project would take five years and cost $500,000.

 

Over the next fourteen years, Borglum and four hundred workers completed the carvings by blasting and drilling away 450,000 short tons of rock from the mountainside, with no fatalities. The total cost was just under $1 million. In 1933, the National Park Service assumed jurisdiction of Mount Rushmore.

 

Washington's face was dedicated on July 4, 1930, followed by that of Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937, and Roosevelt in 1939. A 1937 plan to add Susan B. Anthony to the carving died in Congress. Because of Borglum's complaints, like this letter, the personnel of the first Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission were replaced with a second, effectively giving Borglum complete control. However, in 1939, authority returned to the federal government under the National Park Service.

 

After Gutzon Borglum's death in March 1941, his son and assistant sculptor Lincoln Borglum continued the work until October 1941. Originally planned to include carvings from head to waist, the project ended due to insufficient funding, and the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was declared complete.

 

 

Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) was born in Idaho territory to Mormon Danish immigrants. He studied art in California, where he met his first wife, artist Elizabeth Janes Putnam (1848-1922), whom he married in 1889 and divorced in 1908. They spent much of the next ten years traveling and exhibiting their works in Europe. In 1909, Borglum married Mary Montgomery Williams (1874-1955), and they had three children. Borglum soon became known for public sculptures on American nationalistic themes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of his sculptures in 1906, the first it had ever acquired by a living American. Among his other major works are a head of Abraham Lincoln from a block of marble, a mounted statue of Civil War General Philip Sheridan in Washington, D.C., the North Carolina monument at Gettysburg, and many others. A member of the Ku Klux Klan, Borglum was the original sculptor of the carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia, before clashes with the local committee led him to abandon the work. From 1927 to 1941, Borglum completed his most famous project, the 60-foot-high carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. For the latter half of the project, his son Lincoln Borglum served as his Assistant-Sculptor.

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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