The General Buried Under New York's Fifth Avenue

Groucho Marx once asked the question, "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" on this classic show, "You Bet Your Life" More to the point-who is buried under the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue between West 24th and 25th Streets in New York City? Perhaps one of the strangest sights in a city famed for the bizarre is the appearance of a giant mausoleum stuck right into the middle of a New York City street. New York City law generally requires that the dead be conventionally interred in cemeteries, but made exceptions for two famed Generals.

General Grant's famous tomb overlooks the Hudson River in Morningside Heights, Harlem. This National Monument and famed tourist attraction houses the remains of the General and his beloved wife. General Grant was greatly esteemed by President Lincoln, who once defended him against charges of alcoholism by saying: "Find out what whiskey he drinks and send all of my generals a case."

Although a hero, Grant was one of the worst Presidents America ever had the misfortune to elect. An honest man in the Gilded Age of Scoundrels, President Grant was repeatedly hornswoggled by sharpies, including his own Vice President Schuyler Colfax and House Speaker and later President James Garfield in the Credit Mobilier Railroad Scandal of 1867. He was taken once again in 1869 by his brother-in-law who was in cahoots with noted rapscallions Jim Fisk and Jay Gould in an attempt to corner the market in gold. When Grant found out, he put a stop to it and caused one of the most serious panics in American history. Fortunes were brought to ruin as speculators placed their bets, thinking that the fix was surely in. These horrible catastrophes were promptly followed by the Whiskey Ring and Indian Ring scandals involving bribes paid to his Secretaries of Treasury and War respectively.

Grant's character was proven in that he published his memoirs in a race against time and poverty to provide for his beloved wife Julia. He died of throat cancer one week after finishing his book. Though scoundrels might scheme, not one unearned cent ever stuck to this honorable man's hands.

The people of New York enshrined the General and his wife Julia Dent Grant in a beautiful tomb to forever show their esteem for this adopted son.

Stranger still, is the case of General Worth for whom Worth Street in downtown New York is named. This decorated hero of the Mexican American and Seminole wars, namesake of Fort Worth, Texas, was born to Quaker parents in Hudson, NY but never spent a day in New York City in all the time that he was above-ground. But after he passed from this earth from the ravages of Cholera in 1849, he was shipped from San Antonio, TX to be buried in the state where he was born.

Initially interred in a conventional grave in Green-wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, he was excavated in 1857 and re-interred under an elaborate monument that stands today in the middle of the sidewalk at 5th Avenue between West 24th and West 25th Streets today. The Worth monument is the second oldest monument in New York City. He was lodged in a beautiful spot in his day, but in New York even the dead find no rest. The nearby subway and bus pass by his grave incessantly.

Perhaps the greatest service General Worth ever rendered his country occurred after his death. New York City had been plagued by a notorious pest-hole known as the Five Points for decades. Included in this Disneyland of vice was one building known as the Old Brewery where a murder a night was reputed to have occurred for all of its existence. It has been said that when the building was demolished, the city poured the bones of the dead out.

In an attempt to wipe this ghastly slum from the city's maps and collective memory, the entire area was leveled and re-worked. The grandly named Worth Street replaced the former Anthony Street of unlamented memory. In a city where one can walk streets originally laid out by the Dutch colonists, this demapping stands uniquely apart.

Sources:

www.nps.gov/gegr/

www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php

www.u-s-history.com/pages/h234.html

blog.insidetheapple.net/2009/05/william-jenkins-worth-and-worth-street.html