Chester
Arthur – New York, NY, Providence, RI, & Newport, RI
October
& December 2015
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| Chester A. Arthur Oil paining by Ole Peter Hansen Balling, 1881 National Portrait Gallery |
It is ironic that President
Chester Arthur became known as the champion of civil service reform. If you
think about it, this was the Gilded Age, where society was all about social
acceptance and wealth, whether new money or old money. And it was a society
that both Garfield, in the “cottages” on New Jersey’s beaches, and Arthur, in
visiting Newport and Providence, R.I., seemed to enjoy. It was a time that was
all about who you know, so for them to eliminate a system that was all about
who you know is really quite shocking.
Before his presidency, Arthur
had been part of New York Senator Roscoe Conkling’s notorious Republican political
machine. At Conkling’s insistence, Arthur,
a lawyer and Grant supporter, had been appointed by President Grant to collect
customs for the Port of New York in 1871. This was a cushy job that
allowed Arthur and his handpicked staff
to collect and pocket lucrative fines on illegal goods seized — a completely
legal system called the “moiety system.” He held the position (and made a lot
of money) for seven years before being fired by the reform-minded President Rutherford
B. Hayes in 1878.
When Garfield was shot by a disgruntled
office seeker, the mood of Congress was sympathetic
to reform. And so was Vice President Chester Arthur.
Arthur was blamed by many for
Garfield’s assignation. Recall that as
he fired the shots into Garfield’s back, the crazed assassin, Charles Guiteau,
had shouted, “I am a Stalwart … Arthur is president!”
During Garfield’s months-long
death watch, Arthur hunkered down in his five-story brownstone at 125 Lexington
Ave. in New York City. He stayed away
from Washington, so as not to appear overly eager to claim the presidency. (The Constitution was actually silent on when
the president could no longer perform his duties.)
As Garfield held on after the
shooting, a 32-year-old stranger named Julia Sand wrote Arthur letters of
encouragement. Overall, she sent him 32 letters. In one she wrote: “If there is a spark of true nobility in you,
now is the occasion to let it shine. Faith in your better nature forces me to
write to you … Do what is more difficult & brave. Reform!”
And reform he did.
When Garfield finally succumbed
to his infectious wounds on Sept. 19, 1881, a local judge, John Brady, was woken
in the middle of the night. At 2:15 a.m. on Sept. 20, Judge Brady swore Arthur
in as the 21st President of the United States in Arthur’s New York
brownstone.
During that Lame Duck session
of 1882, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service
Reform Act, which said that civil servants were to be appointed based on
ability rather than political favoritism.
Although it initially affected only 10-20 percent of the federal workforce,
the tide had turned. Arthur, once the puppet
of Stalwart Roscoe Conkling, signed the bill on Jan. 16, 1883.
* * *
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| Arthur's old home today. |
The Chester Arthur Spice
Palace is full to the brim with spices and food from around the world. Spin around
in any direction and you’ll see dried apricots, Turkish figs, nuts, jams, pots
& pans, and aisles and aisles of spices.
There are, no lie, at least 100 types of curry.
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| Thousands of spices! |
Better known as Kalustyan’s,
a Middle Eastern specialist spice store and deli, Chester Arthur lived in this
brownstone at 125 Lexington Ave. from 1853 until his middle-of-the-night oath
of office on Sept. 20, 1881.
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| The plaque outside 125 Lexington Ave. |
Tom visited Kalustyan’s
twice, once in November following a tasty dinner at Penelope’s (159 Lexington
Ave.) with his early 30s nieces, Julia and Andrea Bartz, and again a month
later with Cathy and our friend Jenine Zimmers prior to a savory Indian dinner
at Chote Nawab (115 Lexington Ave.).
The only indication that
Arthur lived here is a bronze plaque protected by a plastic cover mounted on
the outside wall. It states in part that
“Here on September 20, 1881, at 2:15 a.m., Chester Alan Arthur took his oath of
office as the 21st President of the United States upon the death of
President James A. Garfield, killed by a disgruntled office seeker.”
Side note: The building was
also once the home of publishing legend William Randolph Hearst.
 |
| Calvery Episcopal Church where Arthur was married. |
This part of New York was
Arthur’s stomping ground. He married
22-year old Ellen Lewis Herndon, known as Nell, at the nearby Calvary Episcopal
Church. He strolled in nearby Madison
Square Park. He held meetings at upscale
Delmonico’s, which has since moved.
On our second visit to New
York, we walked to the Calvary Episcopal Church. In the dark, it was brown and
imposing. It was closed for the night,
but looked ornate and very Gothic.
We also walked to his
favorite park, Madison Square Park, where today a statue of Arthur stands at
the northeast corner on 26th Street.
When we visited, the park
was decorated in strings of white lights for Christmas. The park also features
an outdoor Shake Shack, where you can order burgers and sit outside, and enjoy
nature or people-watching.
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| Madison Square Park today |
But in Arthur’s day, Madison
Square Park
had a different look and feel.
For one thing, the park displayed the arm and torch of the Statue of
Liberty for six years as funds were being raised to complete the statue. And it wouldn’t have been green. Unoxidized copper is, well, copper-colored.
 |
| Madison Square Park in Arthur's day |
Another difference is that
the nearby streets were likely louder and more boisterous than today. Jack Finney, author of the novel, Time and Again, asks us to imagine the
shear noise of 1880s New York with tens of thousands of horse-drawn
vehicles. “Nearly every vehicle had
four wheels and every wheel was wrapped in iron that smashed and rang against
the cobbles, every horse had iron-shod hoof that did the same … Wheels
clattered, wood groaned, chains rattled, leather creaked, whips cracked against
horseflesh, men shouted and cursed, and no street I’ve every seen of the twentieth
century made even half that brain-numbing sound.”
* * *
Arthur was just one of the
presidents of the Gilded Age. The moniker,
the Gilded Age, was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Warner, who co-wrote the
eponymous novel in 1873. The book described the get-rich-quick sprit of the age
as well as the political corruption of the time. It was said that a thin veneer of gold
covered the corrupt political and economic system.
Although written during the
administration of Grant, the novel came to represent the period from about
1870-1900. It was a time of vast
inequities in wealth — about 1 percent of the population owned 90 percent of
the country’s wealth — much like today.
And much like today, anti-immigrant
feeling was rampant. The 250,000 Chinese,
who had been enticed to labor on the multitude of railroads worked hard for low
pay were resented. They were subject to
discrimination, beatings and lynchings. Congress compounded the injustice by
passing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that barred new Chinese immigration
and stipulated that any Chinese already in the United States would need to live
in the country for at least 20 years before they were eligible to become
citizens. The Chinese were also
restricted on re-entering the United States if they left the country for any
reason. To his credit, Arthur refused to sign the bill. Congress then changed
the time from 20 to 10 years and Arthur felt compelled to sign.
So this shiny gild covering
the country’s dirt enticed us to visit the city that most embodied the Gilded
Age: Newport, R.I. In mid-December, we flew into Providence early on a Saturday
morning (very early, with a 7 a.m. flight) and headed north to the Squantum
Club, on the Providence River. Arthur visited the club for a clambake — a very
popular social event in New England.
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| The Squantum Club |
The Squantum Club complex
features a beautiful four-story colonial called the Clubhouse. It’s a
buttercream yellow, with ornate gingerbread decorations and stained glass
adorning it. Unfortunately, you have to be a member and it was closed, so we
could not go inside. But the virtual tour on its website shows, as we imagined,
dark wood interiors, big fireplaces and general coziness. It also features a
circular, enclosed addition in the back, with almost ceiling to floor windows,
jutting out onto the rocks overlooking the water — with a deck on top. The view
is bucolic, looking west down the river, with a small cove surrounded by trees
and plants.
However, it wasn't built
until 1899-1900. Arthur would have visited its predecessor, the "Brick
House," which according to the Squantum Association's website was
described by a newspaper in 1879 as: "A building part Swiss chalet, part
Norwegian satyr, part Chinese pagoda, with a blood red roof and walls whitened
to a dazzle."
The association has a
complex of buildings, with a restaurant built on Squantum Point. We didn’t like
this building as much, since it looked so new and sterile, although it was
originally built in 1899. There also is a bike path along a set of old, unused
railroad ties that cuts through the complex and along the river. We walked
along it for a bit to enjoy the view.
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| The Elms ($82M in today's dollars) |
Then off to Newport, the playground
of the rich. This is where the elite built their summer “cottages,” along the
breezy Atlantic Ocean, to get away from the stifling New York summers. The
cottages are not cottages — they are mansions. Giant, ornate mansions designed
in the latest fashions and which resemble Versailles and other European
palaces. For perspective, it cost $3 million in 1901 to build the Elms for coal
baron Edward Julius Berwin. $3 million in 1901 is $82 million today (2016). For
a house that would be lived in for 8-12 weeks a year.
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| The Newport Casino - then |
Arthur visited Newport at
the same time that he visited Providence. But because he did not attend their
clambake, the Newport social set (headed by the Vanderbilts and Astors) were
quite annoyed with him. They didn’t realize that he was very sick with a kidney
infection, so could not muster attending the Newport clambake.
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| The Newport Casino - now |
The clambake was at the Newport
Casino, now the home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The casino was
not a modern-day casino with gambling, however; a casino back then was a social
club where society came to play lawn tennis and hold parties and other social
gatherings. The casino featured shops along Newport's famed Bellevue Avenue
(address for many of the "cottages"), a restaurant, archery,
billiards, croquet and lawn bowling as well as tennis. Newport residents also
could enjoy dancing, reading, theater and tea parties. Men and women dressed in
their finest strolled the grounds, chatting and sipping tea. The
mahogany-colored shingled complex surrounded them, a grand clock looking down
on them from a turret.
* * *
After his single term in
office, Arthur retreated back to the Spice House. He died only a year and a half later from
kidney disease. He was only 57 years old.
He had never wanted to be president and had never run for a political
office prior to his nomination as Garfield’s vice president.
Arthur admirably exceeded
expectations that had accompanied his unexpected presidency. Karabell (2004) says that “Arthur is
certainly among the most honorable chief executives the country has seen …. Arthur
reformed the bureaucracy.”
Directions
Kalustyan’s is located at 125
Lexington Ave. in New York City. Look
for the plaque on the outside wall. https://www.kalustyans.com/
The Squantum Club is located
at 947 Veterans Memorial Parkway, East Providence, R.I. 02915. Tours can be arranged. http://www.squantumassociation.com/
The Newport Casino is located
at 150 Admiral Kalbfus Rd, Newport, R.I. 02840.
There is no charge to walk the ground.
The Elms is located at 367
Bellevue Ave, Newport, RI 02840. The
audio tour is wonderful. http://www.newportmansions.org/explore/the-elms
References
Current,
R.N., Williams, T.H., Freidel, F.
1975. American History: A Survey. Fourth Edition. Volume II.
Alfred A. Knopf. New York, NY.
Finney,
J. 1970.
Time and Again. Time & Schuster. New York, NY.
Karabell,
Z. 2004.
Chester Alan Arthur. The American Presidents Series. Times Books.
New York, NY.
McKithan,
Cecil. 1978. National Register of Historic Places
Inventory – Nomination Form. January
1978.
Millard,
C. 2011.
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of
a President. Anchor Books. New York, NY.
Soodalter,
R. By Soil or By Blood. American
History. pp. 56-63.
Twain,
Mark & Dudley, Charles Warner.
1873. The Gilded Age: A Tale of
Today. Penguin Book.
New York, NY.
Videos
History
Channel. 2005. The
Presidents: The Lives and Legacies of
the 43 Leaders of the United States.
Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
http://www.squantumassociation.com/
