"It was intended to be a very dignified mausoleum. Any intrusion of that kind is a compromise with the purpose of the tomb."
The structure rises 150 feet above the ground and symbolically faces south. It has an eclectic architectural style inspired by different and distant emblematic buildings such as The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Napoleon's Tomb in Dome des Invalides, Tropaeum Alpium in La Turbie, and Emperor Hadrian's Tomb in Rome. These influences aimed “to produce a monumental structure that should be unmistakably a tomb of military character (TGMA 2012)”
Grant's Tomb was New York's biggest touristic attraction in the early 1900s. In 1958 the National Park Service was conferred authority to manage the Tomb. However, in the 1970s, the monumentality of the Memorial was reconfigured and it became a meeting point for drug dealers, crack consumers and homeless. Moreover, it and was affected by vandalism and graffiti (Allon 1997).
In 1991, Columbia student Frank Scaturro volunteered with the National Park Service and became an activist for the restoration of the tomb. In 1994, Scaturro’s campaign got the attention of two Illinois state lawmakers who sponsored a resolution to transport the tomb to Illinois in case the NPS did not restore Grant´s tomb. Later on, in the same year, the United States House of Representatives approved legislation to “restore, complete, and preserve in perpetuity the Grant's Tomb National Memorial and surrounding areas”.
However, a previous effort to stop graffiti and vandalism at Grant's Tomb was made in 1972, when this pretentious mausoleum was exteriorly intervened by the NPS through a public arts project that hoped to by to involve diverse members of the Morningside Heights neighborhood. Between 1972 and 1974, Pedro Silva, a Chilean artist, conducted a team of 2500 local adults and children volunteers that constructed a colorful 350 feet mosaic tile benches that snake around Grant's tomb. The mosaic designs contain obvious Gaudí’s reminiscences, and have been compared to “an unfolding comic book”. They include a portrait of General Grant, depictions of his travels and accomplishments, and other images such as animals, flowers and a New York taxicab.
In 1995 the NPS started a $1.6 million renovation in the monument. The initial project considered removing the mosaics. This action reactivated an old controversy about this artistic intervention in Grant’s tomb. On one side, some Civil War enthusiasts and the NPS considered that the mosaics clashed with the site and trivialize its historical significance and architectural and aesthetic character. Moreover, for the Grant Monument Association the construction of the mosaics took place in the context of a “general decline of patriotism and misdirection on the part of the NPS” and, therefore, they favored their removal.
On the other side, local officials, preservationist and City Arts, a nonprofit group that sponsored the project and other public art projects, considered the mosaics a prominent work of public outdoor art in NY that had become part of the traditional monuments in NYC and, therefore, should be preserved. In this sense, they referred that the monument have had a number of modifications along its history and that the mosaics where only the last moment in this process. Finally, their protests were taken into account and the mosaics removal was stopped and even more, they were recently restored by children and adults from the surrounding neighborhood, again, under the conduction of Silva.
The arguments deployed in this controversy bring central subjects that are still part of the debate about the relations between tradition, change and discipline, and the symbolic and material configuration of landscapes. Grant’s tomb was apparently intended to be a “very dignified mausoleum” (Mindlin 2004) evoking classical styles, but became later a mayor touristic attraction, afterwards a lumpen-park and finally was incorporated into the symbolic universe of the locals through a ludic modification.
This case let us have a very close view on how monuments play a central role in the construction of social memory, and how the struggle for controlling this process can radically transform a particular landscape.
Allon, Janet. (1997). “Mosaic Benches Face Unseating At Grant's Tomb”. The New York Times. Published: March 30.
Kahn, David. (1980). General Grant National Memorial Historical Resource Study. NPS
Mindlin, Alex (2004). “Neighborhood Report: Morningside Heights; Dust-Up Over Center For Grant's Tomb”. The New York Times. Published: August 01, 2004
The Grant’s Tomb Monument Association Website. http://www.grantstomb.org/