Lincoln’s ascension to the status of icon was not smooth and steady. Journalist Horace Greeley predicted in April of 1865 that the sixteenth President’s reputation would grow proportionate to the distance from his own era, and it grew steadily from his death in 1865, but soared dramatically following his Centennial in 1909. The exponential growth of his popularity built into a memorial crescendo with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1922 and his likeness carved onto Mt. Rushmore in 1937. This phenomenon extended to Europe.