An Italian immigrant artist who helped shape the Mount Rushmore National Memorial lived most of his adult life in Westchester. Born in 1892, Luigi Del Bianco began wood carving as a boy in Meduno, Italy. As a youth, he studied stone carving and architecture. In 1910, at age 18, he immigrated to Vermont, where he worked in a quarry. In the early 1920s, he moved to Port Chester where he opened a monument carving studio.
After meeting Del Bianco through a mutual acquaintance, renowned Danish-American sculptor and engineer Gutzon Borglum—the designer of Mount Rushmore—took him under his wing. They collaborated to create the Stone Mountain Memorial 15 miles outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and the Wars of America Memorial in Newark, New Jersey.
