[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 18, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                              GRANT'S TOMB

                                 ______


                           HON. HENRY J. HYDE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 17, 1994

  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, Grant's Tomb, once New York's most popular 
visitor attraction, has become one of its most tarnished. The sad 
plight of this important historical figure is more particularly set 
forth in the accompanying article.
  Illinois State Senator Judy Baar Topinka has taken up the cause of 
moving Grant's Tomb to Illinois, where he once lived in Galena, and 
where his last resting place will be treated with more respect. She 
authored an Illinois Senate joint resolution.
  This material has been forwarded to the Honorable Rudolph Giuliani, 
mayor of the city of New York, on behalf of Senator Topinka.

                     [From USA Today, Apr. 1, 1994]

                  Once Grand, Grant's Tomb Now Grungy

                           (By Bruce Frankel)

       New York.--The correct question soon may change from 
     ``Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?'' to ``How much longer will 
     Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia, be buried there?''
       The imposing New York mausoleum where the Civil War hero 
     and 18th U.S. president is buried has been neglected for 
     decades. Now the Illinois General Assembly wants the National 
     Park Service, which administers the tomb, to surrender 
     unconditionally to these demands:
       Show some respect and take care of the century-old tomb--or 
     send the Grants to Illinois, where Grant maintained a 
     residence for 20 years.
       ``Maybe we're just dumb Midwesterners, but we'd be very 
     proud to take care of him,'' says Illinois state Sen. Judy 
     Baar Topinka.
       But Joe Avery, superintendent of the park service's 
     Manhattan sites, defends the government's maintenance: ``It's 
     being sensationalized. We're doing all we can.''
       The tomb once attracted more visitors than the Statue of 
     Liberty. But crime-wary tourists are afraid to visit the 
     122nd Street monument, near Columbia University and on the 
     edge of Harlem.
       Homeless people sleep on its littered portico and urinate 
     in its corners. Drug addicts loiter in the shadows, 
     leaving crack vials behind.
       Graffiti is regularly scrawled on the sepulcher's walls. 
     The roof leaks. Photographs and Grant's Civil War battle 
     flags are missing.
       ``Grant's Tomb has become the most desecrated presidential 
     burial site in the nation,'' says Frank Scaturro, a Columbia 
     University history major.
       Scaturro, a former volunteer park service guide at the 
     tomb, has been trumpeting alarm across the nation in a 325-
     page report.
       ``It's a presidential tomb, and it's being treated as a 
     subway station,'' says Ulysses Grant Dietz, Grant's great-
     great-grandson.
       The stir is getting results.
       About $400,000 has been set aside for contracts being drawn 
     to refurbish the tomb's roof, gutters and ventilation. An 
     additional $50,000 has been approved to open the tomb seven 
     days a week.
       Responds Topinka: ``We'll give them six months to show they 
     means business.''
       For Grant to receive such treatment would have been 
     unthinkable a century ago.
       One million people lined New York's streets on Aug. 8, 
     1885, to watch 60,000 marchers in a five-hour funeral 
     procession for the military leader credited with winning the 
     Civil War and saving the country from dissolution.
       Grant actually wanted to be buried at West Point. But, 
     because his wife could not be buried there by his side, he 
     requested a burial site in St. Louis, Galena, Ill., or New 
     York City.
       New York was chosen because his wife, who lived here, could 
     visit frequently, and because Grant was grateful to New 
     Yorkers for their outpouring of affection when he went broke 
     in his later years.
       Grant was born in Ohio. He went to Galena in 1860 to work 
     in his family's harness shop and left the next year to fight 
     in the Civil War. He returned briefly after the war and kept 
     his Galena home.
       The park service began managing the monument in 1958. Fewer 
     than 50,000 people a year now visit.

                        Senate Joint Resolution

       Whereas, Ulysses Simpson (U.S. ``Unconditional Surrender'') 
     Grant was the best-known Federal general in the U.S. Civil 
     War, and because of his military prowess and daring, he 
     helped to shorten the time of that great and bitter conflict; 
     and
       Whereas, Grant's exploits in the Civil War earned him the 
     Republican nomination and ultimately two terms as the 18th 
     President of the United States where he pushed for 
     conciliation toward the South, sought unconditional 
     readmission of Virginia to the Union, relentlessly opposed 
     the Ku Klux Klan in his ever stalwart detestation of slavery 
     and its aftermath, and established a strong record in foreign 
     affairs; and
       Whereas, Although dying of throat cancer, he wrote his now 
     classic memoirs in an effort to support his family and to 
     guarantee that they would be provided for upon his death; and
       Whereas, U.S. Grant died at Mt. McGregor, N.Y., on July 23, 
     1885, and his body was finally laid to rest amidst much pomp, 
     circumstance, parades and speeches in an imposing tomb on 
     Riverside Drive, on New York City's upper West Side, wherein 
     he was ultimately joined by his much beloved wife, Julia 
     Boggs Dent Grant in 1902, and that his tomb has been compared 
     to other notable 19th and 20th century tombs such as that of 
     Napoleon in the Dome des Invalides in Paris; the Lenin 
     Mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow; and the Tomb of the Unknown 
     soldier, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia; and
       Whereas, Although born in Ohio, U.S. Grant is closely 
     associated with the State of Illinois, where he lived, 
     worked, and spent many happy days in the municipality of 
     Galena; and
       Whereas, It comes to the attention of the Illinois General 
     Assembly that his 8,000 ton tomb in Manhattan has become a 
     hangout for muggers, the homeless and drug dealers and, 
     according to the Chicago Tribune, ``graffiti has to be 
     sandblasted regularly from the tomb's walls and columns''; 
     and
       Whereas, The same Chicago Tribune would note that ``there 
     are few mentions of the monument in tourist brochures. 
     Visitors to the site, which is open only five days a week, 
     find nothing but a few plaques. The lighting is poor, the 
     roof is leaky, there are no tour guides and no bathrooms . . 
     . and in this behemoth city awash with people and problems, 
     the fate of an out-of-the-way memorial to a man from Galena, 
     Illinois, has clearly not been a priority''; and
       Whereas, At least one New Yorker has tried in vain to get 
     the National Park Service, which administers the tomb, to 
     make the tomb respectable again, and has sought the help of 
     Civil War buffs around the nation to contribute 
     rehabilitation monies with little result, and that now, only 
     between 40,000 and 100,000 people a year come to the tomb 
     even though, in 1887 when it was built, the cost was more 
     than $800,000 collected from some 90,000 people around the 
     country so that it would command a breathtaking view 
     overlooking the Hudson River and would be in proximity to 
     Grant's widow's home in Manhattan; and
       Whereas, At the time of its dedication, speeches by 
     President William McKinley and Mark Twain declared that ``New 
     York would always be a famous city because Grant was buried 
     there''; therefore, be it
       Resolved by the Senate of the Eighty-Eighth General 
     Assembly of the State of Illinois, the House of 
     Representatives concurring herein, That the Illinois General 
     Assembly respectfully requests that the Mayor of New 
     York City, the Governor of the State of New York, and the 
     National Park Service appropriately honor the memory of 
     Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States 
     of America, a man who so gallantly served his country in 
     war and peace, by making all necessary improvements and 
     rehabilitations to his tomb and by providing free and 
     accessible tourist information on the tomb; and be it 
     further
       Resolved, That the City of New York and the State of New 
     York, in lieu of making necessary improvements and 
     rehabilitation to Grant's tomb and providing appropriate 
     tourist information, may acknowledge that the memory of U.S. 
     Grant and the maintenance of his tomb now constitute a burden 
     to those two entities; and be it further
       Resolved, That if the maintenance of Grant's tomb is too 
     burdensome, the State of Illinois would then request that the 
     City of New York and the State of New York petition the 
     National Park Service to be free of the burden of the Grant's 
     tomb and that the State of Illinois be allowed to 
     appropriately honor this great hero so that he and his wife 
     might find a final resting place with all due respect and 
     tranquility, in a hallowed space in Illinois selected by the 
     Illinois General Assembly in consultation with the Historic 
     Preservation Agency; and be it further
       Resolved, That if the National Park Service agrees to move 
     Grant's tomb to a site in Illinois, the cost shall be borne 
     privately; and be it further
       Resolved, That Illinois is fully capable of honorably 
     caring for its war heroes and former Presidents' resting 
     places as is illustrated by the outstanding condition of 
     Abraham Lincoln's tomb, located in Springfield, Illinois; and 
     be it further
       Resolved, That suitable copies of this preamble and 
     resolution be forwarded to the Mayor of the City of New York 
     and the Governor of the State of New York in an attempt to 
     ask for immediate consideration of the pleas of the people of 
     the State of Illinois to whom Grant brought so much glory.

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