Here’s What the Lincoln Memorial Typo Said Before It Was Fixed

When the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922, the world bore witness to how $2,000,000 in federal funds, eight years of American elbow grease and 38,000 tons of marble, granite and limestone could result in something truly extraordinary: a very, very expensive typo. Step into the memorial’s interior, turn your attention to the north wall and check it out—the famous Lincoln Memorial typo.

Despite its iconic status as a national treasure and one of America’s most stunning man-made structures, the Lincoln Memorial houses one of the biggest blunders in American monument-making history. And it’s not alone. The Jefferson Memorial swapped the word “unalienable” for “inalienable”—a small slip, but still technically wrong, given what Jefferson actually wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Even the FDR Memorial once misquoted Roosevelt’s famous “freedom from fear” speech.

But nothing quite rivals the Lincoln Memorial typo, especially when you consider the hefty price tag behind the whole thing. Ahead, find out what the mistake originally said before it was quietly patched up.

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What is written on the Lincoln Memorial?

Before we dive into what the Lincoln Memorial typo actually said, let’s take a moment to remember what’s etched into its walls—and why it matters. The memorial features Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1865, just weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. In this speech, the battle-worn president reflected on the toll of the Civil War and shared his “high hope for the future” of a fractured nation beginning to heal.

That hope, from Lincoln’s quote, came from the possibility of unity, justice and a lasting peace, values for the future he saw within reach at last. This makes it all the more disconcerting that the monument meant to honor those ideals couldn’t even get the words right. Read on to find out the surprisingly sloppy Lincoln Memorial typo—and how it was (sort of) fixed.

What did the Lincoln Memorial typo originally say?

To hear the engraver tell it, Lincoln was more concerned with his “high hope for the euture.” Visit the Memorial today and you can still see where the bottom of the E in EUTURE was eventually filled in with slightly off-colored stone to become FUTURE, more or less.

Given the time, money and prestige behind the Lincoln Memorial project, you might think it’s outrageous that such an obvious spelling blunder could make it past so many stakeholders. But the fact is, engraving typos are a shockingly common occurrence, with an even more common explanation: simple, stupid, human error.

Who made the Lincoln Memorial typo?

The Lincoln Memorial may be famous, but the person behind the flub is downright notorious. So who, exactly, is responsible for the Lincoln Memorial typo? Park officials suspect that artist Ernest C. Bairstow might have “grabbed an E stencil instead of an F.”

Another real possibility is that an overworked architect signed off on the typo well before the engraver got to make his mark.

What are other typos in American architecture?

Spelling mistakes are funny, whether they’re newspaper typos or autocorrect fails. But things do get to a whole other level when these typos are carved into buildings and tombstones permanently. Like the Lincoln Memorial typo, the mistakes below will last lifetimes.

Arlington Cemetery in Virginia

Cemeteries aren’t exempt from linguistic goofs either. According to a spokeswoman for Arlington Cemetery, at least 4,125 of the field’s roughly 280,000 tombstones were overdue for corrections to the names or dates etched onto their faces in 2014, the Wall Street Journal reports. (We can only imagine how much the numbers have climbed in the years since!) More often than not in these cases, the fault is with the families of the bereaved, who may well miss tiny mistakes when reviewing proofs of the proposed gravestones.

Street names in San Francisco

Street names stamped into the cement sidewalks of San Fran are notoriously riddled with misspellings and backward letters. According to a SFGate report, one woman who lived on Broadway was “flabbergasted” to find the twin misspellings Brodway and Broadwey stamped onto a single intersection.

Local historian Eric Fischer has caught more than 200 of these typos on the streets of San Francisco, and you won’t hear him complaining about them. “Errors are really interesting,” he told SFGate. “They’re an indication of process. Perfection doesn’t tell you how it was made. It’s when you see the scratch in a piece of wood that you understand how it was done.”

Just how bad are typos like the one on the Lincoln Memorial?

Anyone who has ever written a report for school or work knows that unfortunate typos are a force of nature, and maybe we should start embracing them.

Perfection doesn’t tell you the true story. This is a sobering point, even in the shadow of great men like Abraham Lincoln. Preserved in majestic marble, it’s easy to forget that Abe himself was as flawed and fragile a human as you, me or the engraver who botched “future.” Lincoln ate. He slept. He battled depression. And on more than one occasion, he halted conversation to tell a really long fart joke. To see a man at his best and at his worst is to see a man as he truly is—to see the tree itself, and not just the shadow of the tree, as Abe was fond of saying.

No man is a monument unto himself, and no monument need be either. Now, isn’t that a view worth preserving for euture generations?

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Sources:

• National Park Service: “Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address”
• National Park Service: “Lincoln Memorial – District of Columbia”
• The Wall Street Journal: “An Error Set in Stone—at the Cemetery”
• SFGate: “On the hunt for S.F. street stamp typos”
• ABC 7 News: “SEE IT: Did you know there is a typo on the Lincoln Memorial?”
• American Heritage: “Lincoln’s Life Preserver”