When the cake was being cut, the President was upstairs sobbing. The story of Nellie Grant’s 1874 White House wedding, the East Room Grant rebuilt for her, and the marriage that fell apart.
Alexander Robey “Boss” Shepherd paved Washington, lit its gas lamps, and planted 64,000 trees, then bankrupted the territorial government in 1874 and cost the city home rule for 99 years.
In 1931, gold-topped columns were killed for being too tall for airplanes. Now a 250-foot arch is proposed at the same spot. The full history since 1886.
In 1866, Washington police officer William West stopped President Ulysses Grant for driving his horse too fast near the White House, confiscated the buggy, and sent the president home on foot.
The four bronze lions at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial took two decades to build. Sculptor Henry Shrady died just two weeks before the 1922 dedication — and the lions sparked a controversy over British symbols on an American monument.
Take a look back at Ulysses S. Grant’s 1873 Inauguration with this amazing print from 1873. See the event from Pennsylvania Ave. with this incredible image from the Library of Congress.
Congress introduced a bill in 1887 to build a medieval granite fortress bridge across the Potomac in honor of Ulysses S. Grant. Here is what it would have looked like.
