Grant's Tomb
Grant's Tomb, officially the General Grant National Memorial, is the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, and of his wife Julia. It is a classical domed mausoleum in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The structure is in the median of Riverside Drive at 122nd Street, just east of to Riverside Park. In addition to being a national memorial since 1958, Grant's Tomb is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and its facade and interior are New York City designated landmarks.
Upon Grant's death in July 1885, his widow indicated his wish to be interred in New York. Within days, a site in Riverside Park was selected, and the Grant Monument Association was established to appeal for funds. Although the GMA raised $100,000 in its first three months, the group only raised an additional $55,000 in the next five years. After two architectural competitions in 1889 and 1890, the GMA selected a proposal by John Hemenway Duncan for a tomb modeled after the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Following a renewed fundraising campaign, the cornerstone was laid in 1892, and the tomb was completed on April 27, 1897, Grant's 75th birthday.
Initially, the GMA managed the tomb with a $7,000 annual appropriation from the city. The tomb was extensively renovated in the late 1930s with help from Works Progress Administration workers, who added murals and restored the interior. The National Park Service took over the operation of Grant's Tomb in 1959. After a period of neglect and vandalism, the tomb was restored in the 1990s following a campaign led by college student Frank Scaturro. Despite various modifications over the years, some portions of the monument were never completed, including a planned equestrian statue outside the tomb.
The mausoleum's base is shaped like a rectangle with colonnades on three sides and a portico in front, on the south side. The upper section consists of a cylindrical shaft with a colonnade, as well as a stepped dome. Inside, the main level of the memorial is shaped like a Greek cross, with four barrel-vaulted exhibition spaces extending off a domed central area. The Grants' bodies are placed in red-granite sarcophagi above ground in a lower-level crypt. Over the years, the design of Grant's Tomb has received mixed commentary, and the tomb has been depicted in several films.
Context and planning
was born in 1822 and led the Union Army to victory during the American Civil War, then served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. Grant was bankrupt at the end of his life. Days after Grant published his memoirs to raise money, he died of throat cancer at age 63 in Wilton, New York, on July 23, 1885. The American public still held Grant in high regard when he died: his empty casket drew 15,000 mourners on July 26, and Americans and foreigners alike wrote thousands of letters expressing their condolences.In his will, Grant had indicated that he wished to be interred in St. Louis, Missouri, or Galena, Illinois, where his family owned plots in local cemeteries, or in New York City, where he had lived in his final years. His friend, publisher George William Childs, said the president had previously expressed a desire to be buried at the Old Soldier's Home in Washington, D.C., or at West Point. Ulysses wanted his wife Julia to eventually be interred next to him; this eliminated military cemeteries and installations such as West Point, as they did not permit women to be interred. The Grant family decided against burying him at Galena because that site was not easily accessible, and other sites in Springfield, Illinois, and Troy, New York, were also rejected.
Creation of Grant Monument Association
After Grant died, there were many calls for a monument honoring him. On the same day as Ulysses's death, William Russell Grace, the mayor of New York City, sent a telegram to Julia offering New York City as the burial ground for both Grants. Grace gave Julia a list of city parks where her husband could be buried, and she agreed to have Ulysses's remains interred in New York City. Grace wrote a letter to prominent New Yorkers on July 24, 1885, to gather support for a national monument in Grant's honor:The preliminary meeting was attended by 85 New Yorkers who established the Committee on Organization. Twenty of the attendees created an executive committee, which was to make decisions on the group's behalf. On July 29, the Committee on Organization was incorporated as the Grant Monument Association. Its chairman was Chester A. Arthur, the 21st U.S. president, and its secretary was Richard Theodore Greener, the first black alumnus of Harvard College. In addition, mayor Grace and former U.S. secretary of state Hamilton Fish were named as vice chairmen, as was financier J. P. Morgan of Drexel, Morgan & Co. The association had "between 100 and 150" members in total, including numerous sitting and retired politicians. The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York allowed the GMA to use an office in one of its buildings.
Site selection and temporary tomb
City officials initially planned to bury Ulysses in Central Park, and the Grant family examined three sites in the park. The general public greatly opposed the plans, and the Grant family believed the sites in Central Park were too small to fit both Ulysses and Julia. The family then considered another site in Riverside Park on Manhattan's Upper West Side; though the site was undeveloped, many local businessmen and politicians endorsed the park as the Grants' burial site. On July 28, city officials decided to bury Ulysses in Riverside Park after his family agreed to the change. The Riverside Park site was perched atop a bluff.The day after the Grant family decided on the site, Jacob Wrey Mould designed a temporary tomb. The structure was rectangular in plan, with a door and a Christian cross facing the Hudson River. It was enclosed by brick walls and a barrel-vaulted roof. Grant's coffin was to be placed slightly below ground level, and a semicircular driveway was built around the tomb. Work on the temporary tomb began on July 29 and took nine days to complete. Grant was interred on August 8, following a funeral that attracted up to 1.5 million mourners. The temporary tomb briefly became one of the city's most popular sites, with an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 visitors on August 16 alone. Benches were installed in the area, and guidebooks were sold to visitors. Thirty soldiers were stationed outside the tomb, which was nicknamed "Camp Grant". Many passersby tried to obtain pieces of the tomb. The public continued to visit and leave mementos during late 1885.
The site of the permanent tomb had yet to be finalized when Grant was interred. The city's park commissioners had tentatively decided to place the tomb in Riverside Park between 122nd and 127th Streets, but Frederick Law Olmsted, who had co-designed Riverside Park with Calvert Vaux, was unenthusiastic about this plan. By mid-August, the city's park commissioners had asked Vaux and engineer William Barclay Parsons to determine the boundaries of a permanent memorial site for Grant's tomb. Officials also planned to construct a road north of the tomb to separate it from the rest of Riverside Park. The park commissioners set aside a site on Riverside Drive, between 121st and 124th Streets, for the monument in October 1885. The tomb had spurred real estate development in the area, and the Manhattan Railway Company had proposed constructing an elevated line to the tomb by the end of 1886. Some members of the public claimed the relatively remote site had been selected only to attract tourists and encourage real estate development, although the surrounding area was built up in the 1890s.
Fundraising
Initial efforts and opposition
The Grant Monument Association did not originally announce the function or structure of the monument, but the idea drew public support nonetheless. The New-York Tribune had suggested the idea of a permanent monument on July 26, three days after he died. On July 29, the day the GMA was established, Western Union donated $5,000 to the association's fund. The GMA continued to receive large and small donations, and the fund surpassed $50,000 in less than a month. At a membership meeting on August 20, the committee set a fundraising goal of $1 million, spurred by a suggestion from former governor Alonzo B. Cornell. Funding came from such sources as private companies and benefit concerts. Fundraising had slowed down by the end of August 1885, in part because of the GMA members' lackadaisical attitude, as well as the existence of a competing association with the same name in Illinois.Although there was great enthusiasm for a monument to Grant, early fundraising efforts were stifled by growing negative public opinion expressed by out-of-state press. The opposition was vocal in the view that the monument should be in Washington, D.C. Grace tried to calm the controversy by publicly releasing Julia's justification for the Riverside Park site as the resting place for her husband in October 1885. Even though many major newspapers published Julia's statement, this failed to boost fundraising.
There was also discontent with the management of the GMA, whose members were among the city's wealthiest but made comparatively small donations. The New York Times characterized the members as "sitting quietly in an office and signing receipts for money voluntarily tendered". Furthermore, the GMA still had no definite plan for the monument, which frustrated and discouraged donors. Joan Waugh wrote in her book, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth: "Why should citizens give money to build a monument whose shape was still a mystery?" Many of the GMA's members also had responsibilities of their own and could not devote their full attention to the project. Ten of the GMA's executive meetings were canceled in four months because there were not enough members to form a quorum. The GMA had raised $100,000 by November, and the fund totaled $111,000 by the end of the year, following lackluster fundraising efforts that netted as little as $1.50 on some days.