Historic Significance
Washington Square is of special historic significance because it hosted the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The debates lasted three hours under the hot August sun and focused on the issues of popular sovereignty and slavery which set the tone for the other debates to come in 1858. Because of its historic significance as the location of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, the integrity of its contributing properties, and significance to local life, the Washington Park Historic District was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1973.
Read more about this topic: Washington Park Historic District (Ottawa, Illinois)
Famous quotes containing the words historic and/or significance:
“Never is a historic deed already completed when it is done but always only when it is handed down to posterity. What we call “history” by no means represents the sum total of all significant deeds.... World history ... only comprises that tiny lighted sector which chanced to be placed in the spotlight by poetic or scholarly depictions.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)