In last week’s episode, we heard about Albert Grant: Builder, architect, and Civil War hero. Grant had given up his work in Wisconsin in order to enlist as a Captain in the Union army, and had fought throughout the war. Today, we will see how his life continued after the war.
When we last saw Albert Grant, he had been mustered out of the Army after escaping from a Confederate prison camp, and walking back to Union lines. As he had previously been an architect and a builder, and it was clear that there was an enormous need for buildings in Washington DC, it was an easy decision for him to settle himself and his family in the nation’s capital.
Grant made the correct forecast that the city east of the Capitol was due for a building boom, and decided to build there. Unfortunately, he banked on there being a great demand for massive, ornate – and expensive – buildings in that area. The buildings he built on Square 760 were impressive, built in an ornate Italianate style that would have graced any street. Grant had build 14 buildings along East Capitol Street, stretching from 2nd to 3rd Streets, and 16 along A Street SE. Unfortunately, the high price that Grant demanded for the buildings kept them from selling. The British ambassador was briefly interested in the middle – and largest – buildings, but Grant was asking $75,000 for them and the British decided to buy in the western reaches of the city, instead, setting off a building boom in that area, instead.
The fortunes of Grant’s Row, and Grant himself, declined rapidly thereafter. As early as 1874, some of the buildings were being sold at auction to satisfy some claim on them. Grant spent much of the 1880s fighting off one lawsuit or another, and even a bill passed by Congress in relief of Grant did little to help him.
Adolph Sachse's rather fanciful take on what Grant's Row looked like. From an 1884 map. (LOC)
Grant died in 1889 at age 68, after being ill for several years.
His buildings survived him, though their state was deplorable by this time – and continued to be for the next 30 years. In 1928, they were bought by Henry Clay Folger. Folger, who had worked for Standard Oil since graduating from college, had worked his way up to the posts of president and chairman of Standard Oil of New York. He was also intensely interested in William Shakespeare, and had amassed one of the largest collections of Shakespeareana. Starting in the late 1910s, Folger and his wife began searching for a suitable location to house a library devoted to the bard of Avon.
It took almost 10 years, but they were attracted to the two rows of houses built by Albert Grant, now sadly decaying. In 1928, Folger bought the whole row for $300,000 and in 1930, a week after Folger died, ground was broken for the new Folger Shakespeare Library.
Today, instead of a monument to a Civil War hero’s vision of what Capitol Hill should be, Square 760 boasts a memorial to William Shakespeare and an oil-man.