The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Illinois explores the life of the 16th US president and his legacy, all in the context of wider US history.

From detailed recreations of the places where major events in his life took place – the White House, his boyhood home – to genuine personal possessions, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum has a range of exhibits about Lincoln.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum history

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum opened at its current location in 2004 and is one of the most popular presidential museums in the country. The Library was originally created in 1899 by the Illinois General Assembly. It is a public facility that contains material on all aspects of Illinois’s history including letters and diaries from Civil War soldiers and papers of Illinois businesses, individuals and government officials.

The museum was formally dedicated in 2005 and President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. The museum’s holdings include an original draft of the Gettysburg Address and an outstanding collection of pre-presidential documents and artefacts concerning Lincoln’s life and times.

The museum was designed, created and produced by strategic design and production company under the direction of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency combing scholarship and showmanship. Designed from the inside out, the concept and experience design were created before the building itself. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum aims to engage visitors in a new way.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum today

The Museum and its interactive, state-of-the art technology bring Lincoln to life. Guests will experience the story of Lincoln through traditional galleries with family artefacts, photographs, and statuary.

Holographic and special effects theatres are designed to entertain, educate and mesmerised with ghostly images, live actors and high action.

Items from the institution’s world-class Lincoln Collection, numbering in the tens of thousands, are exhibited on a rotating basis in the Museum’s Treasures Gallery, including an original hand-written copy of the Gettysburg Address, the evening gloves in President Lincoln’s pocket the night he was assassinated, and the quill pen used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

In Mrs. Lincoln’s Attic, children can play with a model of the Lincoln Home, try on period clothing, perform chores from the 1800s, and play with reproduction historic toys. Visitors can take photographs with life-size models of Abraham Lincoln as a boy and an adult, as well as with Mary Todd and the Lincoln children.

Getting to The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum are located next to each other in downtown Springfield, Illinois. A lot of the downtown roads follow a one-way system which is worth noting if driving. The Amtrak train station is 3 blocks away from the Presidential complex.