Grant’s Tomb

The largest mausoleum in North America, paid for by more than ninety thousand donors

Local name: General Grant National Memorial (Grant's Tomb)

Collection: Harlem and Upper Manhattan · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

Grant’s mausoleum on Riverside Drive · Edgar Alfonseca, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is the tomb of General Ulysses S. Grant. According to the National Park Service, it is the largest mausoleum in North America. Grant commanded the Union Army in the Civil War, and from 1869 to 1877 he was the eighteenth president of the United States. He spent the last five years of his life in New York. Grant died on the twenty-third of July 1885, of throat cancer. That same day the mayor of New York offered his widow, Julia, a burial place in the city, and she accepted. For twelve years Grant lay in a temporary vault nearby. The design was chosen in a competition in 1890. The architect John Duncan modeled it on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The whole city raised the money: more than ninety thousand people gave six hundred thousand dollars. That was less than hoped for, so the building came out more modest than planned, at 150 feet tall. It was dedicated on the twenty-seventh of April 1897, on what would have been Grant’s seventy-fifth birthday. President William McKinley dedicated it, and an estimated one million people came to watch. Julia died in 1902 and lies beside her husband: two red granite sarcophagi stand below, in the crypt. Above the entrance are Grant’s words: “Let Us Have Peace.” Electricity was not installed until 1923, and even today the light inside comes mostly from the windows. And according to oral tradition, Mrs. Grant asked that there never be a public restroom in her tomb.

Visiting

Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street, in Riverside Park. Open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission is free. Restrooms, exhibits and a film about Grant are in the visitor center pavilion west of the mausoleum. Information: +1 646 670 7251.