Buried: Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.
Twenty-eighth President - 1913-1921
Born: December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia
Died: 11:15 a.m. on February 3, 1924, in Washington, D.C.
Age at death: 67
Cause of death: Heart failure
Final words: “The machinery is worn out.
I am ready…. Edith!…”
Admission to Washington National
Cathedral: Free
The only president with a Ph.D. (in political science), Woodrow Wilson earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending World War I and creating the League of Nations. His administration also saw the addition of three amendments to the Constitution: the seventeenth, for direct election of U.S. Senators; the eighteenth, prohibiting the sale of alcohol; and the nineteenth, granting women the right to vote.
Wilson was a college professor and president of Princeton University before he entered the political arena. In his first attempt at public office, Wilson won the governorship of New Jersey in 1910. He had barely taken over the job when his name was thrown into the ring for the 1912 Democratic presidential nomination. A compelling speaker, he emerged from a fractious convention and went on to defeat William Howard Taft and Bull Moose candidate Theodore Roosevelt to win the White House. On a cold day in March 1913, Wilson took the oath of office with his wife Ellen at his side.
Woodrow Wilson was laid to rest in the nave of Washington National Cathedral
Ellen would serve just a short time as first lady. She died in 1914 as the “guns of August” signaled the start of World War I. The president was so distraught that his depression lifted only after he met and married Edith Bolling Galt the following year. His physical health had begun to decline, largely due to overwork. He was consumed with efforts to keep the United States out of the growing world war.
Wilson suffered his first small stroke in 1906, which left him blind in one eye. He was plagued by headaches and high blood pressure, occasionally employing a stomach pump to relieve chronic stomach ailments. In 1919 while traveling to build public support for the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson suffered a more serious stroke. This one left him paralyzed on one side and barely able to speak.
Eventually Wilson was able to walk with a cane, but his health was so precarious that Mrs. Wilson began running interference for her husband. By her own account, she reviewed papers and meeting requests to decide which ones were important enough to go the president. Thus Edith Wilson became known as the “Secret President” and the “first woman to run the government.”
When he retired in 1921 after serving two terms, Wilson rarely left his home on S Street in Washington. One of his last public appearances was at Warren Harding’s funeral in August 1923. In the last weeks of his life, Wilson was virtually blind, barely able to move or speak. Edith Wilson, still working at her husband’s side, knew the end was near.
On February 1, 1924, Wilson, lying on his large canopied bed, spoke his last sentences before losing consciousness: “The machinery is worn out. I am ready.” Reporters and curiosity seekers gathered outside the home, waiting for bulletins from the dying man’s doctors. Wilson regained consciousness just long enough to call out for his wife. On February 3, his heart stopped beating. His wife and daughter Margaret were at his side.
Five days later, thirty thousand people braved rain, snow, and bitter cold to line the funeral route. A small private service, attended by President and Mrs. Coolidge, was held in the music room of the house on S Street. Ministers read the 23rd Psalm while a grief stricken Edith Wilson watched the proceedings from the top of the stairs.
Atop the closed black casket lay a spray of orchids from the dead man’s widow. Wilson’s body was borne across the city by a military escort to the unfinished Washington National Cathedral for an Episcopal funeral service that was broadcast on the radio. The organist, who had also served as Wilson’s confidential stenographer for thirteen years, played some of his favorite hymns.
After all of the guests departed, Wilson’s casket was lowered into a crypt; it was later moved to the nave. Edith Wilson remained at their home on S Street until her death in 1961. She is buried next to her husband at the National Cathedral.
Touring Woodrow Wilson’s Tomb at Washington National Cathedral
Washington National Cathedral is located at the intersection of Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues in Washington, D.C. Free parking is available but limited on the north and south sides of the Cathedral grounds. The Cathedral is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The nave level, where Wilson’s tomb is located, remains open until 9:00 p.m. from May 1 through Labor Day. The nave is often closed on Saturdays throughout the year for special events. Admission is free.
From downtown Washington: Take Massachusetts Avenue north and follow to Wisconsin Avenue. Turn right onto Wisconsin Avenue. The Cathedral will be on your immediate right.
From Maryland and the north: Take I-95 to I-495 West, the Capital Beltway. Exit south on Wisconsin Avenue. The Cathedral is approximately 6.5 miles ahead on the left.
From Virginia and the south: Take I-495 over the American Legion Bridge into Maryland and take the Wisconsin Avenue/Bethesda exit. The Cathedral is approximately 6.5 miles on the left. Or, take the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, bearing right onto Rock Creek Parkway. (Note: Rock Creek Parkway is one way southbound during morning rush hour; buses cannot exit on Massachusetts Avenue.) Follow the parkway to Massachusetts Avenue, turning left onto Massachusetts Avenue. Follow Massachusetts Avenue to Wisconsin Avenue, and turn right. The Cathedral is on the immediate right.
The Cathedral is also accessible via Metrorail and Metrobus. On Metrorail, take the red line to the Tenleytown/AU station. Be sure to get a free bus transfer at the station. Exit on the west side of Wisconsin Avenue. Take any “30” series bus (#31, #32, #36, or #37) going south on Wisconsin Avenue. Ride approximately one and a half miles south on Wisconsin Avenue to the Cathedral.
To find Wilson’s tomb once inside the Cathedral, look for the Woodrow Wilson Bay at the center of the nave on the south side.
For additional information
Washington National Cathedral
Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues, NW
Washington, D.C. 20016-5098
Phone: (202) 537-6200
Fax: (202) 364-6600
www.cathedral.org/cathedral
“…an ailing Wilson insisted there would be no American entry into the League of Nations except on his terms.”
—Richard Norton Smith
If Theodore Roosevelt died too soon, Woodrow Wilson may have lived too long, in the process recalling Oscar Wilde’s lament that “each man kills the thing he loves.” Following a stroke in October 1919, an ailing Wilson insisted there would be no American entry into the League of Nations except on his terms.
In February 1924 when the ex-president “went west”—to use the euphemism popularized by World War I soldiers—he was buried under the floor of Bethlehem Chapel in Washington’s uncompleted Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. Despite the presence of Admiral George Dewey, Cordell Hall, and Helen Keller, the National Cathedral never realized its planners’ original intent as a kind of American Westminister Abbey. But it attracts thousands of pilgrims each year, many of whom pause in the cool stone bay off the main nave where today the preacher’s son from Staunton, Virginia rests beneath a crusader’s cross.
—RNS
Wilson’s second wife, Edith, survived him by thirty-seven years. She is buried with him at the Cathedral.