Looking for Lincoln

March 25, 2011 by Taylor Studios in Design & Planning

Springfield, IL is pretty obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. Growing up in Illinois’ capital city, I was generally annoyed by him. We went to a Lincoln site for every school field trip. All of my relatives wanted a tour of Lincoln sites when they came to visit. Enough was enough.

Visiting Lincoln sites with my cousins, 1995

However, as an adult I have cultivated a renewed interest in our 16th president. I think a couple of factors contributed to this: I moved away from Springfield, the opened, and I have had the chance to work with many historic sites as well as help develop an exhibit about in Illinois for the Champaign County Courthouse. Suddenly I have a strong urge to revisit all of the Lincoln sites I dreaded as a kid. This is great timing as Taylor Studios is set to begin work on new exhibits for the at Lincoln College.

In recent years I have also noticed an interesting tourism campaign. It seems like these icons are popping up all over the place, identifying spots around central Illinois that tell Lincoln stories. I had mostly seen them on outdoor interpretive panels until to the Presidential Museum. I never really noticed before, but these icons are scattered throughout the immersive exhibits identifying real locations where visitors can go to learn more. For example, in a section of the exhibits about Lincoln’s time as a lawyer, there was a Looking for Lincoln icon encouraging visitors to go to the in downtown Springfield.

I think this is an interesting tool for marketing the numerous small, but significant Lincoln sites throughout the area. The Presidential Museum has become a destination for tourists, and incorporating links to these less-recognized sites into its exhibits seems like a great way to direct some of those tourists to other spots.

How does your interpretive site cooperate with other related sites? How effective do you think this type of marketing campaign is?