Louisville Waterfront Statue

Renowned Kentucky sculptor Ed Hamilton was commissioned to create a new Lincoln statue, which will be unveiled on the Louisville Waterfront Park on June 4, 2009.

Hamilton has been commissioned to create a large bronze figure of Lincoln that will be the focus of a new section of the park. The Louisville Waterfront Park Development Corporation secured $2 million in state funds for the project. Hamilton's assignment also calls for four bas-relief sculptures with text on Lincoln and Civil War-related Kentucky themes that will be positioned along a walkway leading from the Ohio River waterfront to the main Lincoln statue at the center of a new amphiteather near River Road.

Hamilton grew up in Louisville to become one of the country's leading sculptors of outdoor statues. He has crafted memorials to educator Booker T. Washington for Virginia's Hampson University; boxer Joe Louis for Detroit's Cobo Conference Center; black Civil War soldiers for the "Spirit of Freedom" monument in Washington, D.C.; Africans in bondage for the "Amistad Memorial" in New Haven, Conn.; and the slave known as York, who was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which occupies a prominent spot on Louisville's Belvedere. (Text courtesy of the Kentucky Department of Tourism.)