Features

Late Port Chester man honored for Mount Rushmore work

After 28 years, the Del Bianco family of Port Chester finally has succeeded in getting the National Parks Service to recognize the contribution of grandfather Luigi Del Bianco as chief carver of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota.

Last week, grandson Lou Del Bianco of Port Chester got the official word that his decades of work trying to persuade parks department officials to honor his grandfather had been rewarded. While details of the actual memorial to be erected haven’t yet been decided, Lou Del Bianco hopes it will be the same as the one erected in Port Chester in 2014 at 68 N. Regent St., near where Luigi Del Bianco had lived.

“The tipping point was the documentation. [The sculptor Guston] Borglum had described in detail the contributions that my grandfather made,” Lou Del Bianco said.

In an undated photo, Luigi Del Bianco stands on a scaffold next to the model of Lincoln’s head used to recreate the mountainside Rushmore version.
In an undated photo, Luigi Del Bianco stands on a scaffold next to the model of Lincoln’s head used to recreate the mountainside Rushmore version.

But Luigi Del Bianco’s story has always meant more to his grandson than just a squabble over a piece of granite. That story has morphed into a one-hour stage show that Lou Del Bianco performs throughout the tri-state area.

On Jan. 12, Lou Del Bianco, an actor, gave a multimedia presentation of the story of his grandfather’s work as one of the chief carvers on the 14-year-long Depression-era project to fifth graders of the Osborn School in Rye.

Lou Del Bianco performed the story dressed in the same period clothing worn by his ancestor and spent some of the program speaking in the same half-Italian/half-English language his grandfather used. It included an audience participation segment with five students who each enacted one part of the carving process.

Luigi Del Bianco spent seven years of his life working on the Mount Rushmore project. In 1933, he was the only person given the title of chief carver. During the school presentation, Lou Del Bianco showed black and white photos of the workers climbing the 706 steps—half the height of the Empire State Building—to reach the work site. Luigi Del Bianco was paid $1.50 per hour. The entire monument cost approximately $1 million to build.

In order to re-create the huge stone carvings of presidents Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, Luigi Del Bianco and his team used a formula of ratios to ensure the carvings were made to scale.

The chief carver was responsible for refinement of the facial expressions for the presidential quartet. One student in the audience asked how Luigi Del Bianco was able to make the pupils of the sculptures’ eyes so lifelike.

Lou Del Bianco explained that the pupils were designed using the same principle as a sundial. The light of the sun is used to give the eyes expression as it moves through the day. Borglum learned the technique from Auguste Rodin while studying art in Paris and taught Luigi Del Bianco how to use it on the presidential faces. Borglum is credited as the sculptor of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, with the chief carver never having been recognized for his work.

On June 21, 2014, the village of Port Chester dedicated a plaque at 68 N. Regent St. celebrating Luigi Del Bianco’s role as chief carver for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Photos courtesy the Del Bianco family
On June 21, 2014, the village of Port Chester dedicated a plaque at 68 N. Regent St. celebrating Luigi Del Bianco’s role as chief carver for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Photos courtesy the Del Bianco family

Luigi Del Bianco emigrated to the United States after serving in World War I and first settled in Barre, Vermont, where a group of Italian stonecutters had moved to work in the granite quarries. One of Luigi Del Bianco’s peers recognized his talent and recommended him to Borglum.

The chief carver moved his wife and three sons to South Dakota for the project where his sons attended school and his wife ran the family. One son, Vincent, became enamored with horses and the Lakota Sioux Native Americans who lived on a reservation nearby. Luigi Del Bianco befriended some of the Native Americans, and on Sundays, the family would travel to the reservation where Nicoletta Del Bianco would serve up macaroni and sauce for 100 people or more.

Later in his life, Luigi Del Bianco worked as a stone carver and created more than 500 of the headstones at St. Mary’s Cemetery located in Rye Brook.

Lou Del Bianco only became close to his grandfather in his final years. The chief carver likely succumbed to lung disease in 1969.

Starting in 1988, Lou Del Bianco teamed up with his Uncle Caesar to try and gain recognition for Luigi’s accomplishments. The lesson that Lou Del Bianco strives to convey in his presentations is one of perseverance.

“If you have a passion, you should keep at it until you succeed,” he said.