NYC connection:  President Lincoln spoke at Cooper Union college in 1860.  His 1863 draft order sparked 3 days of riots in NYC.  His body lay in state at New York’s City Hall before departing for a funeral procession and a memorial service at Union Square.

Chester Alan Arthur was the only president not to have been elected to the office, having been the VP when President Garfield was assassinated in 1881 and thereafter losing his party’s primary.  So why is there a statue of him in NYC’s Madison Square Park?  Born in Vermont, he moved to NYC to practice law. When he assumed the presidency, he was living at 123 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan where he took the oath of office, becoming one of only two presidents, along with George Washington, to have been inaugurated in NYC.  His friends commissioned the statue in the late 1890’s.  He’s also one of only 42 presidents never to have been impeached.