Ulysses S. Grant’s Tomb is a colossal Neoclassical tomb, larger than any final resting place of any other president and of any other person in America, that stands overlooking Riverside Park, in New York City.
The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group and the Columbus Amsterdam BID will host “Grant’s Tomb: The president’s final year and how his tomb came to the Upper West Side,” a webinar set for Wednesday, December 1st.
Presenter Louis L. Picone will begin his talk where Grant’s story ends – with the one-time President’s final year when, bankrupt and battling inoperable cancer, he fought to complete his memoirs with the help of Mark Twain in order to secure his family’s financial future.
Picone will share his research and insights into the fascinating story of the creation of the tomb from his latest book Grant’s Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon. He’ll talk about the competition that surrounded the choice of where the resting place for Grant’s remains would be, the origins of the memorial and its design, the struggle to finance and build it over the course of twelve years, and the turbulent history of the Tomb and Grant’s reputation up to recent times.
In addition to his most recent book on Grant’s Tomb, Louis L. Picone is the author of The President Is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond and Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces.
Picone is a member of the Authors Guild, Mensa International, the American Historical Association, and is also a trustee on the board of the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association in Caldwell, NJ. He holds a Masters in History and also teaches at William Paterson University. He has spoken widely on the topic of the presidents and the places we commemorate them, including the White House Historical Association, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, and the international conference “U.S. Presidents and Russian Rulers” at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
This program will begin at 6:30 pm and is free and open to the public. A link to this program will be found on the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group’s website a few days before the event.
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
Leave a Reply