National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Finding Aid Grant Monument Association Records, 1885-1980 Catalog Number GEGR 622 National Park Service Manhattan Sites General Grant National Memorial Arrangement and Description Revised April 2011 Margaret Bausman Originally Processed June 2002 Mary P. Perrault Melissa Underhill Elizabeth Banks This finding aid may be accessed electronically from the National Park Service Manhattan Historic Sites Archive http:// www.mhsarchive.org Processing was funded by a generous donation from the Leon Levy Foundation to the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy Finding Aid Grant Monument Association Records – GEGR 622 Page 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 COPYRIGHT AND RESTRICTIONS ................................................................................................................... 4 PROVENANCE NOTE ...................................................................................................................................... 5 HISTORICAL NOTE ......................................................................................................................................... 7 SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE ....................................................................................................................... 11 ARRANGEMENT NOTE ................................................................................................................................. 12 SERIES OUTLINE .......................................................................................................................................... 13 SERIES NOTES AND CONTENTS LIST ............................................................................................................ 14 RELATED MATERIALS NOTE......................................................................................................................... 62 SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 62 ADDED ENTRIES/ACCESS POINTS ................................................................................................................ 63 Finding Aid Grant Monument Association Records – GEGR 622 Page 2 SUMMARY Creator: Grant Monument Association Title: Grant Monument Association Records Dates: 1885-1980 Extent: 38 linear feet (53 document boxes, 3 half document boxes, 13 index card boxes, 10 flat boxes) National Park Service Accession Number: GEGR-00098 National Park Service Catalog Number: GEGR 622 Historical Statement: The Grant Monument Association (GMA) was established in 1885, just days after the death of General Ulysses S. Grant, with the explicit goal of raising the funds necessary to create and maintain a memorial befitting Grant’s legacy. Over the following twelve years, the GMA solicited contributions and eventually constructed the edifice commonly known as Grant’s Tomb, one of the country’s largest mausoleums, in New York City’s Riverside Park. Thereafter, the GMA functioned as the entity that oversaw the daily operation of the tomb and promoted the legacy of General Grant. In 1959, the GMA transferred the on-going care of the property and mausoleum to the Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Over the next six years, the GMA continued to serve in an advisory capacity. In 1965, the GMA was officially dissolved. Scope and Content Statement: The records of the Grant Monument Association consist of administrative, financial, fund raising, design competition, operational and attendance records. Materials include correspondence, meeting minutes, annual reports, budgets, vouchers, invoices, bills, receipts, tax records, subscription records, architectural descriptions and plans, blueprints, newspaper clippings, publications and ephemera. While most material is loose, there are approximately a dozen ledgers and letter books and hundreds of booklets of subscription records. The correspondents consist of trustees, officers, architects, builders and artists, vendors, local, state and federal authorities, contributors and patrons. Processing Information: This collection was originally processed at the National Park Service Northeast Museum Services Center in June 2002. Processing was revised as part of the Manhattan Sites Archives Project in 2011 by Assistant Archivist Margaret Bausman, with the assistance of Project Archivist Tobi Adler and Lead Archivist Mimi Bowling. National Park Service: Manhattan Sites Finding Aid Grant Monument Association Records – GEGR 622 Page 3 Funding Source: Processing of this collection was made possible by a generous donation from the Leon Levy Foundation to the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy. Contact Information: Chief of Cultural Resources, National Park Service, Manhattan Sites Federal Hall National Memorial 26 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005 (212) 825-6883 National Park Service: Manhattan Sites Finding Aid Grant Monument Association Records – GEGR 622 Page 4 COPYRIGHT AND RESTRICTIONS The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. The various state privacy acts govern the use of materials that document private individuals, groups, and corporations. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a reproduction if the document does not infringe the privacy rights of an individual, group, or corporation. These specified conditions of authorized use include: • non-commercial and non-profit study, scholarship, or research, or teaching • criticism, commentary, or news reporting • as a NPS preservation or security copy • as a research copy for deposit in another institution If a user later uses a copy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," the user may be personally liable for copyright, privacy, or publicity infringement. This institution's permission to obtain a photographic, xerographic, digital, or other copy of a document doesn't indicate permission to publish, exhibit, perform, reproduce, sell, distribute, or prepare derivative works from this document without first obtaining permission from the copyright holder and from any private individual, group, or corporation shown or otherwise recorded. Permission to publish, exhibit, perform, reproduce, prepare derivative works from, sell, or otherwise distribute the item must be obtained by the user separately in writing from the holder of the original copyright (or if the creator is dead from his/her heirs) as well as from any individual(s), groups, or corporations whose name, image, recorded words, or private information (e.g., employment information) may be reproduced in the source material. The holder of the original copyright isn't necessarily the National Park Service. The National Park Service is not legally liable for copyright, privacy, or publicity infringement when materials are wrongfully used after being provided to researchers for "fair use." This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if fulfillment of the order is judged in violation of copyright or federal or state privacy or publicity law. National Park Service: Manhattan Sites Finding Aid Grant Monument Association Records – GEGR 622 Page 5 PROVENANCE NOTE The original finding aid produced in 2002 by the NPS Northeast Museum Services Center delineates the following details concerning the provenance of the collection: During the late 1970s, the curator of the General Grant National Memorial, David M. Kahn, discovered a series of footlockers in a storage room on the crypt level of Grant’s Tomb. Therein he found GMA records spanning a range of periods. Some, dating prior to 1897, had been sealed into copper boxes. It was Kahn’s deduction that these records had been set aside by the Tomb’s architect John H. Duncan following the completion of the Tomb as the onsite office was then closed. Thereafter and until the 1920s, GMA records creation and management occurred in the business office of the GMA secretary. In 1912, this system resulted in the loss of GMA records from 1897–1911 (possibly including John H. Duncan’s original rendering of the Tomb) when the offices of GMA Secretary Henry W. Hayden located in the Equitable Life Insurance Building were destroyed by fire. It appears that from the 1920s onward, GMA records were created and managed both at the tomb and in the business office of the GMA secretary, and that from time to time off-site records were brought to the tomb for storage. Kahn surveyed, inventoried and arranged1 the records. They were transferred to the Federal Hall National Memorial. At one time there was a collection of Grant Monument Association records in the care of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry when it was located at 65 Liberty Street, New York, NY, where the GMA had offices apparently during the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The 2002 finding aid notes that these records consisted of: three alphabetized letter boxes of correspondence dating from January 1, 1928 through 1933; a box of invoices and receipts dating from January 1, 1928 through 1933; a vertical file that contains, among other things, letters to and from John Russell Pope; galley and photographic work for the 1929 Handbook of the Grant Monument Association. Efforts to transfer these