Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Part Two

One of These Kids Is Doing His Own Thing



In the 1970's and 1980's, at about the same thime that I was bugging my father to take us to Grant's tomb, it was caught in a rapid decline. A lack of interest about the Civil War, a major increase in crime, and a total lack of vision on the part of the Park Service, led to vandalism, graffiti, and generalized decline. The Grant Monument Association's website states that there was evidence of prostitution, homeless residence, drug activity, and the use of high explosives in the area. The website even claims that the tomb was used as a site for animal sacrifices.

I don't know about the animal sacrifices, but I believe their assertion that vandals used high explosives to blow the beaks off the gargantuan granite eagles that sit in front of the tomb. Although the statues have been restored, it is still possible to see where they were damaged:


Here are some pictures of the graffiti and other damage to the tomb:





In the 1990's, the remaining members of the Grant family threatened to re-inter Grant and his wife in Illinois if New York did not refurbish the tomb. This, along with a lot of lobbying and lawsuits, led to a massive cleanup effort. The change has been massive, and it is difficult to connect the tomb as it now stands with the disaster depicted on the Grant Monument website.

This is not to say, however, that some jarring notes don't remain. With its marble and granite materials and elaborate ornamentation, Grant's tomb represents the height of Beaux Arts memorial architecture. Inside, however, this is paired with a gray cloth cubicle divider that is used to display contextual historic material:


The Office Space look really clashes with the marble and granite and, generally, looks tacky as hell. Of course, compared to graffiti, dead animals, and human excreta, a jarring cloth divider is a pretty minor problem. The bigger disaster waits outside.

In 1972, the National Parks Service spent much of its budget for the upkeep of Grant's Tomb on the creation of a collection of mosaic-covered benches. Here's an example:


This bench, from the "alien autopsy" school of furniture design, seems to hug the tree, even as it mirrors the structure. Here's another image from the Grant's Tomb website. It juxtaposes the side of the tomb with the horrifying benches:


And here's a shot of one of the benches, sporting a scorpion motif:


One wonders how much of the NPS' grant to the artist went toward the purchase of psychedelic drugs:

This particular section looks like a dragon ate a big box of crayons and took a crap all over the plaza:


More psychedelia:


Yay! A cab:


One massively under-represented segment of American society is the druggie chess players. After all, it's not easy to play chess with a head full of acid, and society tends to ignore their need for a place to inspire the hallucinations while one battles opponents. Luckily, the National Park Service is nothing if not understanding, and created this space for the guy who can't choose between Timothy Leary and Boris Spassky:


I don't want to seem like a snob, but, well, I am. I tend to regard the artistic produce of the late-1960's and early 1970's with a critical eye. This isn't to say that the monstrosity surrounding Grant's tomb doesn't have its place: I think it would be perfect in a playground.

Preferably next to a school for the blind.

Deprived of the jarring colors, I'm sure that blind children would be able to really enjoy the exciting contours and textures of the sculpture. They could spend hours crawling on the uncomfortable surfaces, playing with the designs.

That having been said, however, the benches definitely don't belong next to Grant's tomb. The two structures have nothing in common whatsoever. Next to the benches, Grant's tomb appears stodgy and standoffish, and next to the tomb, the benches appear amateurish and cheesy. I can only wonder about the combination of blackmail, drugs, and oral sex that the artist must have employed to convince the Park Service to sign off on this travesty.

Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Part One

The Death of Restraint


When I was a kid, my father had dozens of little routines that he constantly threw out. My sisters and I were placed in the role of straight man as he hit the key punchlines in various Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Marx Brothers routines. One of his favorite lines was "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?"

Unfamiliar with Marx's TV show "You Bet Your Life," I always assumed that this was a legitimate question. After all, maybe they built a huge crypt for Grant, but then someone more deserving died, so Grant ended up in a narrow grave while some other ex-president or a supreme court justice was buried in his tomb.


This, by the way, is what happens when you get used to trick questions. I had a little trouble dealing with the obvious.

When I got a little older and began displaying my nascent tourism interests, I asked my father where Grant's tomb was. He told me that it was in New York. When I asked him if we could ever visit it, he gave me a vague answer that it was "up North" and that we might go there "someday."

Based on his evasive answer, I assumed that the tomb was located somewhere in upstate New York, maybe near the Canadian border, and that we would never visit it. Years later, after I came to the city, I realized why my father was so loath to visit the site: it was located above 59th Street. As I might have mentioned once or twice, my father had a little paranoia about the city, and Harlem might have been Timbuktu as far as he was concerned.

One day, after dropping George off at day care, I decided to stop in and visit Grant. After a little research, I found out that his tomb was located at 122th Street and Riverside Drive, about fifteen blocks South of George's day care.

When Grant died, the national outpouring of grief was immeasurable, and areas fought over the right to hold his body. After a lot of politicking, New York City gained the contract, and a huge public subscription paid for the structure itself. The then-president, Benjamin Harrison, used a golden trowel to lay the cornerstone. The tomb itself, the largest individual mausoleum in North America, was based on a few classical references, including the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus (which was one of the wonders of the ancient world) and Napoleon's mausoleum. The original plan called for a spur of the Hudson rail line and a dock on the Hudson river so that pilgrims could use numerous routes to come pay their respects.

Ultimately, these plans were scaled back somewhat, and they abandoned the dock and rail spur. However, the site is still a little over the top. To get to the mausoleum, one walks down a long, tree-lined plaza. The building itself is a huge pile of marble and granite, with a huge rotunda, gigantic granite eagles, and angels surrounding the slogan "Let Us Have Peace."

Inside, it's even crazier. There are three mosaics that detail events in Grant's Civil War career, a huge open cutaway (or oculus, if you want to be really particular about it) in the middle of the floor that displays the high-gloss caskets of Grant and his wife. There are also side rooms containing flags from the war, as well as painted murals outlining the major battle sites. After I talked to the guard a little, he let me go down to the caskets on the floor below.

The coffins of Grant and his wife sat side by side in their underground area, surrounded by busts of famous Civil War generals. It is simultaneously intimate and overwhelming.

It is also a little tacky and excessive. After all, Grant ranks with Dubya and Warren G. Harding as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. By his own admission, he was in over his head as a politician and statesman, and his presidency was marred by one terrible scandal after another. This is not to underestimate his incredible performance as a general, and the amazing honesty of his memoirs, but Grant was a disastrous President.

When one considers the comparatively humble graves of Lincoln, FDR, Jefferson, and Washington (not to mention Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, and even Kennedy), the fact tht America's largest and most impressive tomb is dedicated to Grant seems downright insane.

On the other hand, it's an amazing space, and it makes me nostalgic for the days when people would dedicate millions of dollars to create incredible public monuments. Once upon a time, people decided that they wanted to honor their greatest general and worst president. They saved their money and built an outrageous memorial that dwarfs the imagination and honors both Grant and their own excessive exuberance.