Today we celebrate “President’s Day” but until quite recently it was really the official celebration of George Washington’s birthday on February 22. It is fitting that New York celebrates President’s Day since so many of our most important presidents have ties to our city.
The first for obvious reasons is George himself. He was inaugurated here in New York City; the first capitol of the new United States. Most of the precedents that he established surrounding the office were created here. One could argue that if the third president of the United States, Jefferson, had liked New York the nation’s capitol might still be here. Our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, began his law career here and became the first New Yorker (he was from Kinderhook, New York) to be elected to the presidency.
Our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, credited New York and the speech he gave here at Cooper Union with winning the presidency. New York City, strongly Democratic and tied to the Southern economy, never voted for Lincoln. But we gave him a great funeral procession and his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, would visit here after his death.
Lincoln’s funeral procession up Broadway, passing Teddy Roosevelt’s grandfather’s home on the corner of 14th Street and Broadway. The famous photo has Teddy and his brother Elliot, watching from the second floor window facing south.
Chester Arthur, our 21st President, was also inaugurated in New York City at his home on Lexington Avenue after the death of James Garfield. The same year that Arthur was inaugurated a former president, Ulysses S. Grant move to New York. Grant bought a house on 66th Street. Grant would only live in New York for four years dying in 1885 from throat cancer. But as the city had done with Lincoln, they gave Grant a spectuclar funeral and eventually Grant’s tomb.
He would be followed into the presidency in 1901 by native Manhattanite, Theodore Roosevelt, who grew up not far from Arthur’s home in the Gramercy Park area.
Teddy’s cousin, FDR, was from the Hudson Valley but had a home here in the city famously given to him by his mother, Sarah, as a wedding gift. During the 1920s, when he was recovering from polio his office was on Liberty Street. Eleanor Roosevelt, like her cousin Teddy, was born in Manhattan and grew up here. Like Jackie Kennedy, Eleanor never really left Manhattan even while First Lady. She stayed in a friend’s apartment on East 11 Street in the Village and during World War II bought an apartment on Washington Square West for their life after the White House. She lived there until 1950 when she moved uptown to the Upper East Side.
Of course, our current president, Donald Trump is also a native New Yorker. Mr. Trump is the first president to be born in Queens, New York. Once again, the spotlight is back to New York’s role in the office of the presidency.
Bowery & Canal 