College Costs

 

Chester A. Arthur was not a president whose name rings many bells after his time in office. He became president because he was James Garfield's vice president and Garfield was assassinated early in his term. Prior to being on the Garfield ticket Arthur was a chief mucky-muck in New York Republican politics, aided by the patron saint of  New York Republicans, Roscoe Conkling. Arthur was the chief Customs Collector in New York, and with the system of accepted givebacks, was literally making more money than the president.  Perhaps significantly, Roscoe Conkling's statute is at one end of Madison Square Park, and Arthur's is at the other.

Aside from being the answer to a trivia question, Chester A. Arthur was one of the few presidents sworn into office in New York City. This fact escaped my knowledge until I read in Monday's NYT that the building where Arthur lived and took the oath, still standing, may not ever ascend higher on the Landmarks Preservation Committee's list to consider protecting. In fact, it may be dropped from the list all together.

All this is easy to understand when you look at the building where Arthur lived and was awoken on September 20, 1881 at 2:10 A.M. to take the oath of office after confirmation of Garfield's death reached New York.

The building is at 123 Lexington Avenue, near 28th Street, and is a building I would have walked past any number of times as I went to the landlord's office to pay the family's flower shop rent in the 1960s. Usually late. I never knew I was walking past anything historic. And why would I? The plaque pointing all this out, when it wasn't being stolen, was inside the front door.

That particular stretch of Lexington Avenue is changed in the sense that at street level the storefronts are full of Thai and Indian restaurants. The buildings however, are the same, with no high rises in sight. Still passing through this area I think of how unchanged the height of any buildings is. The Old Print Shop is still there, looking nearly as old as the prints they sell. I attribute the lack of development to air rights that went elsewhere, but what do I know?

It is not surprising that Arthur would have lived in the house. That was a much more fashionable part of town in the 1880s, with its location just north of Gramercy Park.

Sam Roberts, the reporter who is giving us the story with all this nostalgia, does close with an observation that can be taken two ways, the way it was meant, and the way it could be twisted. I always go for twisted.

Mr. Roberts tells us that " a recent study led by Henry L. Roediger III, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis (just think of the contacts Mr. Roberts must have!), found that only 7% of college students remember Mr. Arthur at all."

Sounds like a small percentage. But if 7% of college students remember Arthur then they've been in school waaaaaay too long and need to move on. It's no wonder college costs so much.

Poor parents.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com