NYC History Tour, Part 2: Random Presidents and Stuff

Welcome to Part 2 of Presidentress' historical tour of New York!

You'll remember from Part 1 of my tour that people like rubbing, licking, and otherwise posing with the Bull of Wall Street's testicles. Well, across the street from the bull's balls is the old U.S. Customs House, where Chester A. Arthur served as Collector of Customs, a highly coveted position bestowed upon him thanks to the strong New York spoils system. I forgot to take a picture of it, though.

Sort of related, in the sense that it involves money and power, is where we ate lunch on the first day of our tour. There is now a Bobby Van's Steakhouse in the lobby of the old J. P. Morgan bank. In the basement, which used to be the bank's vaults, is the Vault Grill. One of the private rooms (which also does double-duty as a wine cellar) was J. P.'s own private vault, and that's where we ate. Since my love for Robber Barons rivals my love for presidents, this was an awesome experience.

We walked off our lunch by visiting several other sites, including Cooper Union, where Lincoln gave his famous Cooper Union speech.

Speaking of Lincoln, we also stopped by Gramercy Park, where there's a statue of Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes. Edwin lived in Gramercy Park and was a famous Shakespearean actor. His home is now the location of the Players Club that he founded.

I didn't get a photo of it (because I didn't realize it was there at the time), but Samuel Tilden also owned a house in Gramercy Park. You'll remember Tilden from such disputes as the Election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877. Also from the cake I made a couple months ago. Tilden's house is now home to the National Arts Club and is located just a couple doors down from Edwin Booth's old abode.

We also stopped by the New York Police Department's former headquarters, where Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner. The building now contains private condos, so we couldn't go in.

Then we walked by Roosevelt's childhood home, which we also couldn't go into because it's closed for renovations. (Thankfully we knew this ahead of time or else I would have been crushed.)

Our next stop was Tammany Hall, home of the famous/infamous political machine. Most recently it served as an art school, but apparently it is now undergoing major renovations as well.

We also somewhat unexpectedly stumbled upon a statue of William Seward. Seward was Secretary of State under Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and is probably best known for Seward's Folly, or the

purchase of Alaska. What many people don't know is that he was also targeted for assassination the night Lincoln was killed.

John Wilkes Booth's plan was that while he was busy killing Lincoln, two other people would kill Secretary of State Seward and Vice President Johnson, thus upending the Executive Branch. Only one of the plots wound up successful. The guy who was supposed to kill Johnson chickened out, and Lewis Powell, the guy who was supposed to kill Seward, tried but failed. His gun misfired, so he wound up pistol-whipping Seward's son and then stabbed Seward several times, but Seward survived. (If you want to learn more about Seward and the assassination attempt, make sure to read Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. I can't wait to hunt down the Seward Plaque in D.C.)

I did a little more digging and learned that there was some controversy surrounding Seward's statue. The same sculptor had previously created a statue of Lincoln, and some people claim that the artist simply recycled Lincoln's body and slapped Seward's head on top.

Incidentally, my New York friend said that people often steal the quill from Seward's hand, so we were lucky to find it intact.

And speaking of statues, on Day Two of our tour, we hit (figuratively) Columbia University and saw

the building where Lou Gehrig used to hit (literally) Columbia University. (There were no baseball fields, so he did the best he could, which involved accidentally breaking windows with his home runs.) That area is just a stone's throw (if you're Gehrig) from a forlorn statue of Thomas Jefferson.

Apparently the statue, bequeathed by the estate of Joseph Pulitzer, was supposed to be installed in New York's City Hall Park near a statue of Nathan Hale. But Hale's sculptor didn't want another statue there, so the plan was foiled. Instead, the Jefferson's statue was relegated to a courtyard in front of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, where it's not visible from the street and no one but J-School grad students and weird people searching for presidential relics will find it. Poor Thomas.

Apparently there is also a statue of Alexander Hamilton on the Columbia campus, but I didn't learn about that until just now, so I didn't seek it out.

After Jefferson, we walked several blocks to Grant's Tomb. My New York friend had never been inside so it was something new for all of us. The building itself is lovely, but it's surrounded by a strange art installment: a series of garish mosaic benches that pay homage to everything from Smokey Bear to seahorses. They were cool but felt out of place at Grant's Tomb.

Anyway, I'm a big Grant fan, so it was nice to be able to pay my respects. (Yeah, "paying respects" and taking a selfie...they don't have to be mutually exclusive.)

My BFF and I also attended a Broadway show and afterward we met Jeff Daniels, one of my very favorite actors. I'm including that tidbit here partly to brag but also because I've featured Jeff Daniels in two presidential-ish Separated at Births: William Jennings Bryan and William Henry Harrison.

William Jennings Bryan/Jeff Daniels

William Henry Harrison/Jeff Daniels

Thus concludes Presidentress' historical tour of New York. There are dozens and dozens of other presidential (and related) sites I didn't get to see, so I might need to go back. If you're in the area, seek out some of the places I've mentioned here, and feel free to share your finds. Happy travels!

NYC History Tour, Part 1: Hamilton/Revolution

Presidentress has been quiet lately, mainly because I've just been busy with stuff and partly because I've been unmotivated. I have a whole list of ideas for presidential blog posts, and I'm in the middle of reading a book I plan to review, but I've fallen into a sort of presidential malaise, which Jimmy Carter would appreciate.

Well, what better way to get amped up again than a whirlwind presidential trip to New York City?

The trip wasn't exactly planned as a presidential thing. Instead it was planned a girls' getaway weekend with my BFF from high school. Our only set-in-stone activities were a Broadway show and a tour at the Tenement Museum (I highly recommend). But then I got in touch with a family friend, a native New Yorker who knows everything about the city and who offered to customize a tour for us. Not all of it was presidential or even tangentially presidential---there was some music, literature, baseball, and Robber Barons thrown in---but it was more than enough for a blog post.

It also involved 21 miles of walking over the course of two days, so we covered a lot of ground.

First up: Hamilton!

No, that's not the Broadway show we saw. Neither of us wanted to mortgage our houses to pay for tickets. But we did the next-best things. (And let's not nitpick over the fact that he wasn't technically a president.)

First we went to Alexander Hamilton's grave at Trinity Church. Angelica, Eliza, and Phillip are there, too. (So is Robert Fulton of steamboat fame.) My New Yorker friend said before the Broadway musical hardly anyone visited that cemetery, but now the place is crazy busy. At least three giant tour groups plus dozens of stragglers swarmed through in the half hour we were there.

Just a couple blocks away is Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president. It also served as the capitol building during the short time the government was based in New York.

The building that stands today was actually constructed in the 1840s after the original was razed in 1812, but it contains a piece of the ground on which Washington stood, the railing he stood behind, and the Bible he used when being sworn into office.

George Washington was Here

I'm not actually touching it

Just a couple blocks from Federal Hall is Fraunces Tavern, which was an important hangout before and during the Revolution (some scenes from the Hamilton musical are set there). Prior to the

Revolution, the Sons of Liberty met at the tavern, and they even staged a pre-Boston-Tea-Party tea party when they forced a British naval captain to apologize for bringing tea into New York. The tavern served as one of Washington's headquarters during the war, and it's where he gave his farewell speech to his officers once the war was over. It also served briefly as a government building before the offices moved to Federal Hall and the tavern turned into a tavern again.

A museum on the second and third floors contains relics and information about the role the tavern played before, during, and after the Revolution. (No photos allowed.) The tavern still serves as a restaurant---and a nice-looking one at that---but we didn't eat there because we had other plans.

On our way to lunch we passed by the Wall Street bull. Remember how I wrote about people rubbing Abraham Lincoln's nose for good luck? Apparently people do the same thing with the bull's balls. (I just missed getting a photo of a woman licking them.)

Stay classy, America.

But back to Hamilton. On the second day of our trip, we took a train to the Hamilton Grange National

Memorial, the house where "the Hamiltons move[d] uptown." Honestly, until I started planning this trip I had no idea that Alexander Hamilton's house still existed, nor had I actually given it any thought. I imagine this place has also enjoyed a tremendous boost from the popularity of the musical.

The house has been moved (twice) a short distance from its original location, but it's in the same general area and even today it has more of a pastoral feel than downtown Manhattan. I mean, it's clearly a city, but it's definitely "quiet uptown" and was probably even more so back then. You can see why it would appeal to someone trying to escape the bustle.

The lower level of the house is a small museum dedicated to Hamilton. The upstairs has a few rooms decorated in period furnishings. It's not a grand house or an extensive museum---we were done within half an hour, probably---but it's worth a a trip to see it.

A short cab ride took us to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the yang to Hamilton's yin. This house was

built in 1765, but the owner was forced to abandon it during the Revolution. The house served asWashington's headquarters for a while, then it later served as British headquarters before eventually being taken over by the new U.S. government. In 1810 a guy named Stephen Jumel purchased it. His wife, Eliza, wound up becoming rich by dealing in real estate, which was almost unheard of back then.

When Stephen died, Eliza married...wait for it...Aaron Burr! When they got married Eliza's property automatically transferred to Burr's ownership and he didn't waste much time before starting to sell off her belongings because that's the kind of guy he was.

So in this one house, we have George Washington's war room just a few steps from Aaron Burr's bedroom. History is so incestuous.

Washington's war room

Burr's bedroom: He's reliable with the ladies

Hidden Mickeys!

We took a self-guided tour of this house like we had with Hamilton's. When we got there, one of the docents rushed us into the octagonal living room to take a quick look before it was closed off for a yoga class. My BFF and I agreed that it would be pretty damn cool to take a yoga class in Aaron Burr's house, but we weren't dressed for it and our bodies hurt from all the walking. I wanted to go back later in the evening for their paranormal event (my New Yorker friend says that the house is considered quite haunted), but it didn't fit in with our plans.

Just across the street from Burr's house is the stairway that used to lead from Coogan's Bluff down to
the Polo Grounds where the New York Giants played before moving to San Francisco. Besides the staircase, there's really nothing left of the Polo Grounds. We walked over a bridge to the site of the new (and the few remains of the old) Yankee Stadium. It was a long bridge, but I had no idea Yankee Stadium was so close to the Polo Grounds. (I could find ways to connect this to presidents, but that will probably have to wait until I begin my "Presidents and Baseball" series, which should be coming...someday.)

Stay tuned for my next post, which is dedicated to random presidents and other such people.

Also, if you haven't already bought it, make sure you get your copy of the "Hamiltome," the book about the musical. It has all the annotated lyrics plus tons of background info. Available at Amazon!

McKinley Still has a Mountain

Eight people sent me links about the Alaskan mountain's name change from Mount McKinley to Denali. I considered writing about it but try as I might, I just couldn't get interested in it. Sorry.

When I explained this to my friend Anne, she suggested I write about William McKinley's favorite pie or something, just to distract people. I don't know his favorite pie (note to self: find out) but I did recently take a trip to visit his tomb, and I've been meaning to write about that. What better time than now?

I visited McKinley's monument when I was in Ohio a few weeks ago. It was actually the second time I'd been, the first being last year when I was there with my husband and kids. My children, probably tired from traveling and climbing the 12,000 (or 108, but who's counting?) steps to the top, fought and yelled at each other when we got to the mausoleum part. I wanted to avoid being disrespectful to the dead, so I hurried them out and didn't have a chance to really absorb any of it. This time, though, I was alone and could take as much time as I wanted.

The McKinley Monument is located in a park in Canton, Ohio, just a few steps from a science/history museum with a room dedicated to McKinley. Even though I had gone to the museum with my kids the year before, I decided to go again for two reasons: 1) My Museum of Science and Industry membership got me in for free, and 2) I needed to take pictures of Ida McKinley's slippers. (That's another post for another day.)

I had planned on visiting the museum first, but since I arrived before it opened, and since the nearest Starbucks was 14 minutes away and required that I get back on the interstate, I decided to take advantage of my free time by taking in McKinley's tomb/monument/memorial.

If you've never been there, you need to understand that this thing is huge. The tons of stairs make it a popular spot among fitness buffs who run up and down for their exercise. Being less of a fitness freak, I panted my way up and stopped a couple times to take photos. When I got to the top I tried to block out the guy doing tai chi so I could read some of the information posted about McKinley and the monument.

One of the signs made me snort and inspired me to send this text to my friend Kirstin:

You know, the info at this memorial says that it's dedicated to a man "of simple and dignified life" and that the "funds were not to warrant a lavish display, even if that had been appropriate, which it was not." And yet this is the most effing elaborate presidential monument I've seen. 

Seriously, I get that this was built toward the end of the gilded age, when opulence was a given. I get that he was a president, and an assassinated one, no less. He became a martyr, and maybe people felt a need to honor him in a material way. But if this isn't a "lavish display," I don't know what is. And the current landscape isn't even as elaborate as the original: There used to be a waterfall and small river in the shape of a sword leading outward into the park from the base of the monument. Now it's just grass.

Given McKinley's legacy of the Spanish-American War---a war whose main goals were to obtain land and establish American superiority---I can't help but think of this building as not only as a monument to McKinley, but to American imperialism in general. It's big. It's foreboding. It's white. It's...apt.

So...wow. I meant for this to be a lighthearted distraction from the McKinley/Denali debate, but I guess it didn't quite end up that way.

Will my selfie with an animatronic President McKinley and First Lady lighten the mood?

And here, I just found this on the Mrs. Field's blog: "William McKinley was a very simple eater. No favorite desserts seem to be found." Bummer. 

Doing Taft Proud in Cincinnati

I grew up in Ohio, but until last week I had never been to Cincinnati. See, I'm from Northeast Ohio, which meant I always viewed Cincinnati as "other." As "south." As "the Reds." But since William Howard Taft is one of my favorite presidents, and since his National Presidential Site is there, a trip to Cincinnati became a necessity--and I'm really glad it did, because that's a fun town!

I had intended for this to be a review of just the Taft site, but I'm going to include all the other things we did there, too. It turns out Cincinnati has some great food, and if Taft were alive today, I'm sure he'd enjoy it as much as we did.

First, the Presidential Site. It's not as flashy as Lincoln's or as large as Hoover's (two sites we've been to this year), but it was quaint and informative. When we first got there, we walked past the visitor's center so we could take some photos with the props we'd brought. Yes, you read that correctly. I brought my Taft bobblehead (courtesy of my friend Sunny!) and my daughter Anna brought the Andy Warhol-inspired portrait she made for Presidents Day. A concerned park ranger, thinking we were lost, came over to make sure we knew where the entrance was.

Once we got our portrait and bobblehead tucked back into the car, we headed into the house for an introductory video. Now, we've encountered many nice park rangers (like the ones who helped us when my baby threw up all over Abraham Lincoln's sidewalk--I'll have to blog about that), but our ranger at Taft's house was especially great. His name was Jason, and he was knowledgable, passionate, and funny. We loved him, and I think he might have loved us, too.

When Jason asked if we were stopping by on our way to our destination, I said this was our destination. A bit surprised, he asked, "Taft or Cincinnati?" I said Taft, and he just about fell over. I don't think he'd ever heard that before.

After the video, he showed us around the house. Very little of it is original, as it had been turned into apartments at one point. But it has been restored, and they have some of the family's furniture in there now. The kids got to play with some period toys, which was nice. Usually there's a strict hands-off policy in historic houses, so it was fun for them to get to do something. The upper level had displays we could browse on our own.

I was perplexed there was no information on the Billy Possum. Still, though, I was glad to have been able to visit Taft's home. We bid Jason adieu and headed off to lunch.

This was the first of the amazing restaurants we'd visit in Cincinnati. (We'd had Cincinnati chili the night before, and it was okay, but not drool-worthy.) Melt Eclectic Cafe, on the other hand, was drool-worthy. This place was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and if all the places Guy goes to are as good as this one, I'll definitely seek them out. Mr. Presidentressor and I split an Artichoke Melt and a Verde Chicken sandwich, and both of them were the kinds of things you want to savor forever and never finish.

When we did finish, though, we headed over to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. Nothing puts me to sleep faster than natural history, but the kids wanted to go and we got free admission thanks to our Museum of Science and Industry membership, so we went. It was actually a pretty good museum. My eyes did glaze over a few times, but there were enough dead birds to keep me interested. What I really loved, though, was the building the museum was housed in. There's a whole complex of museums inside a fantastic art-deco train station from the 1930s. I could have stood there for hours just staring at the architecture and lettering. Ironically, I have no photos of it. I figured I probably couldn't do it justice, so I didn't try.

Following the museum, we went to Graeter's for ice cream. Although this was our first time in Cincinnati, it wasn't the first time we'd had the ice cream. Many years ago, one of Mr. Presidentressor's friends sent him a case of Graeter's ice cream. Mr. Presidentressor, being the nice guy he is, decided he'd just bring home one pint and would distribute the rest to his co-workers. He let them choose, of course, and at the end of the evening he came home with...a pint of vanilla. Yay. In Cincinnati, though, I had Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, and it was outstanding.

Then that evening, we went to Eli's Barbeque, where we had some of the best pulled pork we've ever eaten. Great ribs and jalapeño cornbread, too.

The next day we went to the American Sign Museum. Initially I thought this would be a chintzy roadside attraction. (We're a big fan of chintzy roadside attractions, so I don't say that with derision. I just wasn't expecting much.) This place is amazing, though!  It's anything but chintzy. It is a legitimate, honest-to-goodness, entertaining-yet-educational museum. We wound up spending three hours there! The first hour we looked around at all the signs, including one Mr. Presidentressor recognized from SoCal.

The second hour or so was spent on a tour led by the museum's founder. I didn't think the tour would tell us anything we hadn't already seen by walking around, but I was wrong again. This guy is incredibly knowledgable about signs, having been in the business his whole life. (His great-grandfather founded a trade publication for sign-makers, and the magazine is still in the family.) There's so much I never knew--and never thought to think about--regarding signs. And as he said at one point in the tour, the museum isn't just about the history of signs; it's about the history of the United States as told through signs, and that's so true.

Finally, we were able to go into the adjacent-but-separate neon shop, where we received a demonstration about bending tubing and lighting signs with different gases. The kids loved that! I highly recommend the Sign Museum to anyone in, near, or passing through the Cincinnati area. I can't say enough good things about it.

Our final meal in Cincinnati was at Tom + Chee, a grilled cheese restaurant. They've expanded beyond Cincinnati, but not into Chicago yet. I had a tomato-y, garlicky grilled cheese with creamy tomato-basil soup, and it was fantastic. The grilled cheese donuts were a fun novelty for dessert, but not something I'd get regularly.

So what did we learn? We learned a lot about signs. We learned that the park rangers at the Taft home really want people to know that William Howard Taft did not get stuck in a bathtub (and they're impressed when you already know that). We learned that Cincinnati has some great food and some funky little neighborhoods. I think Taft would have enjoyed the barbeque.

Hoover with a Side of Reagan

A few months ago we passed through West Branch, Iowa, on our way to California. I wanted to stop at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, but it was -14 that day, and the site includes several small buildings located outdoors. Instead I decided it would make a great day trip sometime when the weather was warmer, and that's how we ended up there a couple days ago.

The site consists of a visitor's center, a museum, Hoover's birthplace cottage, a blacksmith shop like the one his father had, a Quaker/Friends meetinghouse, a schoolhouse, a statue of Isis, a tallgrass prairie, and his (and First Lady Lou's) gravesite. The only building that requires a fee is the museum, which was the least exciting part for the kids, but we dragged them to it anyway.

The site has a Junior Ranger program, which we're big fans of at National Parks and Sites. Kids visit different parts of the complex and complete activities in a booklet. When they're done they're named Junior Park Rangers and receive a badge and/or patch. (In the case of the Hoover site, they received both! They also got nice full-sized Hoover pencils, a nice change from the tiny golf pencils we've gotten at other National Parks.)

We were there on a Thursday before school let out, so we had the entire place almost entirely to ourselves. Other than employees, I think we spotted five other people the whole time.

I had been to the museum once before, but that was 20 years ago so it was nice to "catch up" with Herbert again.

Most people think of him (if they think of him at all) as the guy who caused the Great Depression, but it wasn't his fault; he's just the one who got stuck holding the bag. Historians can debate for hours whether Hoover did enough to help fix the problem, whether his policies (which involved indirect aid rather than direct funding) would have eventually worked, whether FDR's policies are what saved the county, whether they made things worse, whether he just got "lucky," etc. But regardless, Hoover is often unfairly demonized as uncaring when nothing could be further from the truth. He was a lifelong humanitarian who cared deeply about people within the country and abroad.

We didn't have as much time at the museum as I would have liked. We spent a long time exploring the other buildings beforehand, plus our arrival in West Branch had been delayed by at least an hour due to a major crash that shut down Interstate 80. We did get to absorb most of it, though.

On the way back we needed to stop for dinner so we pulled off in Dixon, Illinois, location of Ronald Reagan's boyhood home. We had dinner then drove by the house. It was too late to go in, but we took a couple pictures of the outside and also snapped a few pics with the statue of Reagan holding a handful of corn.

We hadn't intended to see two presidential houses that day, but it worked out well. (One of the benefits of living in the Midwest is that there are many presidential sites within a day's drive. I hope to hit several more this summer.)