Post-presidency of George Washington 21, 1885. In 1923, historian Doane Robinson had developed an idea to make a gigantic sculpture on the Black Hills of South Dakota. Robinson hired renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the job. Borglum, at the time, was making a Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain. Borglum searched for a mountain suitable for his project and he found Mount Rushmore, composed of granite, named after a New York attorney Charles E. Rushmore. Four prominent presidents were chosen for the sculptor to bring national recognition, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Washington was chosen to represent a "light for
Gutzon Borglum By the time the show was ready to open, however, Borglum had resigned from the committee, feeling that the emphasis on avant-garde works had co-opted the original premise of the show and made traditional artists like himself look provincial. He moved into an estate in Stamford, Connecticut in 1914 and lived there for 10 years. Borglum was an active member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons (the Freemasons), raised in Howard Lodge #35, New York City, on June 10, 1904, and serving as its Worshipful Master 1910–11. In 1915, he was appointed Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of