Lincoln Memorial Statue

 statue, interesting place, historic landmark

On May 30, 1898, the statue of Abraham Lincoln was erected in the old railroad plaza at the corner of Lincoln Boulevard and Mountain Avenue.

Silas Dewey Drake, one of the forefathers of Middlesex, commissioned Alphonse Pelzer, a German immigrant, to create the statue. Pelzer employed a technique similar to the one used by the French on the Statue of Liberty.

The bronze-like copper model statue stands 7 feet tall on 13 inch feet. It cost Mr. Drake $700.00 to purchase this statue from the W.H. Mullis Architectural Co., with a sales office located on Chambers Street in New York City and its main manufacturing office located in Salem, Ohio. Mr. Drake was the president and manager of the New Jersey Mutual Realty Company and a developer of land in the Borough and he wanted a statue of Lincoln to be located in the section of Middlesex that he was developing at that time, which he called "Lincoln".