Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [34]
The scene surrounding Grant’s deathbed was a crowded one. In addition to his family, several doctors, nurses, a minister, a stenographer, and a sculptor (for the death mask) gathered around the dying man in the parlor of his home. When he died on the morning of July 23, the first news reports were on the wire within two minutes.
After he became ill, Grant had considered three potential sites for his burial: West Point, eliminated because the academy would not allow his wife to be buried with him; Galena, Illinois, where he received his first general’s commission; and New York City. Unknown to the general, his family had also discussed burial at the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, a site was recommended overlooking the Hudson River on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Here, he was laid to rest on August 8, 1885, following one of the largest pageants the country had ever witnessed: sixty thousand people marched in his funeral procession.
New York City’s African-American population played a leading role in the initial planning and funding for Grant’s tomb. Richard Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard, was secretary of the Grant Monument Association. In 1888, he organized a design competition to gather proposals from architects for a suitable monument. The winner was an elaborate granite and white marble tomb designed by John Duncan. The tomb, which broke with the then-current fashion of erecting obelisks, was completed in 1897 and dedicated by President William McKinley in a ceremony attended by a crowd estimated at one million people. It is the largest mausoleum in North America. Grant’s wife Julia was buried alongside him when she died in 1902.
Touring Ulysses S. Grant’s Tomb at the General Grant National Memorial
After years of disrepair, the General Grant National Memorial is now restored. Operated by the National Park Service, the memorial is located at Riverside Drive and 122nd Street in New York City on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Operating hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., daily, except New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas. Admission is free.
To reach the memorial by car: Take the Henry Hudson Parkway to the 95th Street exit. Go north on Riverside Drive to 122nd Street. A limited amount of street parking is available.
To reach the memorial by subway: Take the Seventh Avenue-Broadway #1 subway train, which stops at the West 116th Street station on Broadway, two blocks east and six blocks south of Grant’s Tomb.
Bus service is provided on Riverside Drive up to 120th Street by route M-5. To reach the memorial by bus: Take the M11 bus to Amsterdam Avenue and West 118th Street.
For additional information
Superintendent
General Grant National Memorial
Riverside Drive and 122nd Street
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 932-9631
Fax: (212) 666-1679
www.nps.gov/gegr
“Doctors applied a cocaine solution to dull the excruciating pain of throat cancer, the result of Grant’s twenty-cigar-a-day habit.”
—Richard Norton Smith
In fact, there is nothing new about fascination with death, especially as it affects the politically celebrated who can outrun any opponent but time. In the summer of 1885, Ulysses S. Grant died by inches while an eager public camped outside the twelve-room cottage on New York’s Mount McGregor. Inside the old hero was attempting to recoup his losses from a Wall Street swindle by penning his war memoirs for Mark Twain.
Doctors applied a cocaine solution to dull the excruciating pain of throat cancer, the result of Grant’s twenty-cigar-a-day habit. Nightly injections of morphine enabled the patient to gain strength for