When Ulysses Grant died, Americans recognized that a giant figure in their history was gone. Admirers staged the grandest funeral the nation had ever known. The route of the procession in New York City was made to stretch as far as was possible, from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Riverside Park in the upper northeast. It seemed that nearly everyone in the city was in attendance and that half of the buildings were draped in black. Special trains from the South offered low fares to the event, an indication of Grant's reputation nationwide at his death.