The Ulysses S. Grant Association

I stand before you today in front of a building that has a lot of meaning for me. This year, December 14 will mark the centennial of my great-great-grandmother’s death--the year when Julia joined her beloved husband inside this great tomb for their eternal rest together. Separated by Ulysses’ death from cancer in 1885, in 1902 they were at last reunited.

This building is a symbol of many things--especially to someone like me, because I love buildings. Obviously it is a symbol of my ancestor and namesake--that is the symbol most Americans understood when it was built and dedicated in 1897. For the average American in 1897, it was a symbol of a great hero: the man who saved the country and kept the stars and stripes flying over a united nation. It is a heroic building, built for a man who did great things. It is a symbol, first and foremost, of the way America felt about U. S. Grant a hundred years ago.

But this tomb is also very much a symbol of the time in which it was built. The late 1800s was an era when people did things in a big way. People built big businesses and big fortunes; they built big houses to live in and big office buildings to work in. They built big museums big public libraries, and big post offices--just look at Manhattan and Brooklyn--or any old industrial city--for examples of that. And, if you visit any of the great old cemeteries, you’ll see that rich people also built themselves big tombs. The man who founded Prudential Life Insurance, which is headquartered in Newark, where I work, built himself a really big tomb in Mount Pleasant Cemetery there--although not as big as this tomb.

To us today, this huge tomb seems a little hard to explain--because no one today can imagine building such a thing for anyone today--even a great hero. President Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington is not a big building--it’s not a building at all. It’s just a simple grave, with its eternal flame and some bronze markers. The remarkable Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington isn’t a building either. It’s sort of an un-building--and very moving for anyone who fought in that war or lost someone in the fighting. These un-buildings are symbolic, too; symbolic of the way Americans feel today. They are symbols of a different time and place. If you were to bring someone from 1897 to the Vietnam Memorial, I don’t think they’d understand it at all. People thought differently a century ago.

The great church behind you--Riverside Church--is a tremendous symbol. It’s no surprise that all houses of worship are symbols. This church is a symbol of the great religious faith of the Rockefeller family, and their vision of an American church that was dedicated to doing good works and teaching tolerance. It is big--a symbol of the Rockefellers’ vast religious vision, and their ability to do great things with their wealth. The Rockefellers decided to build this kind of church in response to other great symbolic buildings in New York. They were clearly thinking of St. Patrick’s Cathedral down on Fifth Avenue, completed in the 1870s, and the largest church in America. St. Patrick’s was a very powerful symbol when it was completed, not just of Christian belief, but in the growing power and prestige of the Roman Catholic population of New York in the middle of the 19th century. St. Patrick’s was a symbol of the way America had changed, and a symbol of how Catholics had prospered in spite of prejudice. In a very similar way, Temple Emanuel, further up Fifth Avenue, and the largest synagogue in New York, was a symbol in the 1920s of the increasing power and prestige of Jewish people in America--and fact that Jews had found greater acceptance and tolerance in America than anywhere else in the world at the time.

Not all symbolic buildings are so obvious. Where I work, at The Newark Museum, across the river in New Jersey, I am in charge of an old house, built in 1885 for the Ballantine beer-brewing family. It is a big house, and pretty grand, and is typical of the big thinking of the late 1800s that I mentioned before. But for me--and for many people--this house is a different symbol. When the Ballantine House was built, Newark was a rich city, with twice as many people as it has now, most of whom were European immigrants, or the children of immigrants. When it was built, the Ballantine House was a symbol of the wealth and power of the Ballantine family--and by extension of the city where they lived. Today the house is a symbol of a world that seems as far away as the time of the dinosaurs. It is a symbol of history and of survival in a changing world--and, for me, it symbolizes a history that we need to remember and to celebrate.

In the past year the symbolism of buildings has been brought home to us in the most devastating way, in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the severe damage to the Pentagon in Washington. From my childhood, the Pentagon has been the symbol of the American military, and our great strength in the world. Countless times on television while I was growing up I can remember seeing a view of the Pentagon from the air—its distinctive shape an immediately recognizable icon of who we are as a powerful nation. For most of us, and even for people who didn’t live near New York City, the World Trade Center towers had become symbols of New York City--almost as much as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. Since my college years the twin towers had been symbols of the 20th century concept of "big."

Of course, symbols are not always good things to everyone. Symbolism changes, and people understand it differently at different times. During the Vietnam War, when I was a teenager, the Pentagon became a negative symbol for many Americans of my generation. Also for many people of my generation, the World Trade Center towers, when they were first built, were too big, and too ambitious--somehow symbolizing that American business had gone too far. And yet, for most of us, as we got used to the twin towers, they gradually began to replace the Empire State Building as the symbol of New York.

Ironically, to the terrorists who attacked these buildings last September, the symbolism was the same--only for them it was bad. These buildings were attacked because they were symbols of the freedoms we enjoy, and the power we wield in the world today. After the attacks, they also became symbols of our vulnerability, and our misunderstanding of just how much anger and hatred there is in the world.

So now let’s return to this place, and this building, and its symbolism. Today, in the year 2002, it might seem strange and unnecessary to preserve and care for a huge, impractical, useless building that serves only to hold the graves of two long-dead people. But the thought that I want to leave you all with today is the absolute importance of continuing to care for and preserve this building because of its symbolism. True, it is a symbol of the extravagance of an age long gone, of a way of seeing the world that we no longer share. But it is also the symbol of the power of one person--of humble origin--who, in a free country, endowed with civil rights and the freedom of expression, can rise from obscurity to do great things--to help free millions of people from slavery, and to preserve a nation. Nowhere but in America could someone like Ulysses S. Grant have risen to the heights he rose to; and nowhere but in America would the people of the nation have loved him enough to build him a tomb such as this one.

As we face an uncertain future together as a nation, this is a symbol that we must cling to.

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