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Cost of Entire Plan Estimated at $3,500,000

The estimated cost of the entire Memorial, including the Panorama, the Memorial Hall and the Amphitheater, is $3,500,000. This money is being raised by public subscription. Mr. Borglum estimates, as stated above, that the time required to complete the work will range between six and eight years, with the aid of the hoisting machinery. He is finishing as rapidly as possible in his studio in Stamford, Conn., all other work which he had under way when the Memorial was started, and will devote his entire time to this stupendous undertaking, which is not only the greatest of his career as a sculptor but the supreme work of art in all history.

In 1915 Mrs. C. Helen Plane, of Atlanta, the widow of a gallant Confederate officer who was killed in battle, and a charter member of the United Daughters of Confederacy, wrote Mr. Borglum a letter inviting him, on behalf of the U.D.C., to visit Stone Mountain and pass judgement upon the idea, which had been suggested by various people and given considerable publicity, of carving on the precipice a colossal statue of Robert E. Lee.

When the sculptor gazed upon the mighty background, almost a thousand feet in height and more than three thousand feet long, he instantly received the impression that a single statue representing one man would be too small. He frankly told the ladies that in his opinion a figure of Lee alone would be dwarfed into insignificance by the mountain. They challenged him to produce a greater plan which would be in keeping with the magnitude of the precipice.