The National Park Service has removed original copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment from a new exhibit under the Lincoln Memorial after they were exposed to unsafe heat levels.
Both the historic documents, bearing the signatures of Abraham Lincoln, are on loan to the federal agency from billionaire philanthropist Ken C. Griffin. They were displayed in the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft, a museum housed in the cavernous foundation of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington that opened to the public for the first time last month.
The agency said in a statement Thursday it had acted out an “an abundance of caution” to protect the 160-year-old artifacts, pointing to the extreme summer heat that has blanketed the nation’s capital for weeks.
“We have collaborated with the Griffin Catalyst team and the National Park Foundation to temporarily relocate these documents while environmental concerns associated with the heatwave affecting Washington D.C. are addressed,” the park service said in a statement.
