A lucky few National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) branches were intended to display elegant stained-glass windows of Civil War heroes, artifacts from temporary commemorative arches built for the Grand Army of the Republic’s (GAR) 21st Annual Encampment in September 1887 in St Louis, Missouri. The oversized windows - called “cathedral glass” or “transparencies,” and incorporated into state-of- the-art “illuminations” at the gathering – are as fascinating as components of a technology-driven display as they are for their artistic beauty. After sunset, electric lights would bring the images of President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant to life for onlookers in the streets below, in the way that neon and Jumbotrons would have first awed twentieth-century audiences.
Read MoreLincoln and Grant in Lights
