President Abraham Lincoln, Manchester

The dedicated Manchester statue of President Lincoln in Platt Fields was near to Platt House on a platform for numerous visitors to observe and stand in admiration.

When in Platt Fields the President Lincoln dedication statue was famously seen daily by thousands of commuters travelling along Wilmslow Road (A34) into town.

The Statue of President Lincoln was also visited because of the vast crowds who enjoyed Platt Fields park for the Manchester Flower Show and other major events before the late 1960s.Then followed the rapid economic demise of Rusholme and the later threat to this American symbol of a US white liberal.

Now President Lincoln is in an obscure location, surrounded by undistinguished functional office blocks, viewed by few people in its new cul-de-sac, not even on a thoroughfare, but, thankfully, rescued from anti-US hostiles.

The corruption, changing Lincoln's text to "people", in the inscription, of Lincoln's original letter to Manchester by revisionist council apparatchiks, remains an affront, a disgraceful insult to the US people and Manchester people of that period.

President Abraham Lincoln of the USA belongs in the renowned Moss Side campus of Manchester University.
It would be a fitting site for the greatest abolitionist of US black slavery, not a back street off Deansgate.

When the statue of Abraham Lincoln by the American sculptor George Barnard was finally unveiled in Platt Fields park in Rusholme, a Manchester Guardian critic observed that, while London had received Lincoln the president, Manchester had got Lincoln the man. Conceived as a token of friendship between the United States and Great Britain, the monument provoked a huge outcry in the US due to its "naturalism". The president who fearlessly fought against slavery was depicted in shabby clothes, with stooped shoulders and disheveled hair, and huge hands and feet. As much as this could be true to life, the public opinion both in America and in England objected to it with passion. The Guardian once again observed that this statue had set out the blind connoisseurs from the sighted better than any other work of art in the recent years.

Because the statue was primarily destined for London, the American side eventually sent to Britain a more conventional statue of Lincoln by Saint-Gauden. The statue by G. Barnard could land in Manchester, or Liverpool, or Norwich, and this is where the Manchester pride spoke up aloud. A visit from Woodrow Wilson helped, too, and the statue was transported to Manchester and was for several months kept in the fire station by Piccadilly.

The statue was first unveiled in August 1919 in Platt Fields Park, and the plan was to move it to Piccadilly later on. This never happened. Instead in 1980s the statue was moved to the newly redeveloped Queen St, between Deansgate and Albert Square, as a part of the plan to encourage and promote the public art. Whereas in Platt Fields it stood on the ground, here it was put on a higher pedestal, to avoid vandalism. And the redeveloped area was appropriately renamed into Lincoln Square.

Lincoln Square can be accessed from Deansgate, or from Albert Square via Brazenose Street.