1897 GRANT MEMORIAL INAUGURAL PARADE SOUVENIR PROGRAMME GRANTS TOMB NYC EPHEMERA For Sale

ITEM DESCRIPTION

Original souvenir programme issued for the Grant Memorial Inaugural Parade held in New York City on Tuesday, April 27, 1897, in celebration of the dedication of the completed Grant Monument, today known as Grant’s Tomb and officially designated the General Grant National Memorial. Printed by Freytag Press at 118-126 Walker Street, New York, this four-page programme is printed in dark blue ink on salmon-pink paper. The front is framed by an ornamental border and features an engraved view of the monument beneath the title, together with the original price of five cents per copy.

The interior preserves a printed Line of March and an exceptionally detailed Order of the Parade. The route begins at Twenty-third Street and Madison Avenue, proceeds by Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, the Boulevard, Seventy-second Street and Riverside Drive, circles the monument at Claremont, and returns by Riverside Drive and the Boulevard to the reviewing point. The parade order opens with mounted police, the Governor’s Island Band and Grand Marshal Major General Grenville M. Dodge, followed by the Military Grand Division.

The extensive roster names the United States Military Academy Corps of Cadets, Army engineers, infantry, artillery and cavalry, United States Marines, Navy seamen, the New York National Guard and Naval Militia, governors and military delegations from numerous states, military-school cadets and independent militia organizations. The concluding page continues with the Veteran Grand Division and Civic Grand Division, including Major General O. O. Howard, Grand Army of the Republic departments and posts, Medal of Honor men, Union veteran organizations, Veteran Zouaves, Sons of Confederate Veterans, New York letter carriers, firemen, public-school groups, fraternal orders and immigrant civic societies.

Beyond its direct association with Ulysses S. Grant, the programme is a detailed primary-source record of the military, veteran, civic, ethnic and governmental organizations that participated in one of the great public spectacles of Gilded Age New York. Grant’s Tomb was dedicated on what would have been the former president and Union general’s seventy-fifth birthday. The occasion was observed as Grant Day and drew approximately 55,000 marchers and around one million or more spectators. President William McKinley and General Horace Porter addressed the assembled crowd while Julia Dent Grant and members of the Grant family attended.

The monumental granite-and-marble mausoleum was designed by architect John H. Duncan and financed through one of the largest public subscription campaigns of the period, with approximately 90,000 contributors raising more than $600,000. The word “Inaugural” on this programme refers to the inauguration and dedication of the memorial rather than a presidential inauguration.

The paper is fragile and substantially worn, with extensive splitting and separations along the central fold, including open breaks and small areas of loss. There are numerous edge tears and chips, several areas of paper loss along the margins and corners, heavy creasing and wrinkling, scattered brown spotting, foxing and soiling, and uneven age toning. The outer right edge and lower margins show particularly pronounced losses. Most of the printed text remains present and legible. No tape repairs or handwritten notations are present.

Make sure to see the photos above for complete details.

Single folded sheet, four pages.

Measures approximately 11 1/4 inches tall by 7 inches wide.

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