A one-of-its-kind flag that draped former President Abraham Lincoln’s casket throughout his funeral procession has discovered a brand new house within the Large Apple — at a Midtown steakhouse.
Keens Steakhouse, the 141-year-old white tablecloth joint identified for its intensive assortment of Americana memorabilia, unveiled the gargantuan, half-million greenback public sale discover throughout a non-public unveiling ceremony Thursday.
“It’s actually a treasure,” Keens Steakhouse common supervisor Julia Lisowski advised The Put up of the historic flag, which was utilized in procession after Lincoln was assassinated in workplace in 1865.
“It’s a extremely particular and superb piece of historical past that we’re so honored to have right here.”
The 37-star American flag – believed to be the one surviving casket flag from Lincoln’s funeral prepare from Washington DC to his burial website in Springfield, Illinois – might be completely displayed within the restaurant’s second-floor “Lincoln Room” treasure trove of presidential artifacts, the place historical past is served alongside mutton chops and Porterhouse steak.
The flag’s new digs marks considerably of a return house to New York, Lisowski stated, because it was commissioned from storied Fulton Avenue-based flag maker Annin & Firm, referred to as the biggest and oldest flag making operation within the nation.
As a part of the funeral prepare procession, it traveled on a 1,600-mile journey via tons of of US cities in 1865– and even handed via Metropolis Corridor in Manhattan.
Often called the Applegate Flag resulting from its provenance handed down via generations of the descendants of military physician Lewis Applegate’s household for greater than 150 years, the flag was first gifted to the doctor from Sen. Edwin D. Morgan — who was one in every of solely six Senate pallbearers who rode with the funeral prepare, Lisowski stated.
After exiting the Applegate lineage in 1977 and exchanging arms in two different households, the flag was donated to the Museum of Southern Historical past in Jacksonville, Florida in 1996 — till it was rediscovered “down a darkish hallway behind a bookcase” throughout a listing test in 2023.
It was round that point that Keens possession additionally modified arms to billionaire Tilman Fertitta for a cool $30 million.
Lisowski referred to as it “kismet” that Fertitta stepped into the function as public sale home Guernsey’s put the flag up on the market in 2024. The hospitality mogul, behind the likes of the Rainforest Cafe and Bubba Gump Shrimp, grabbed the famed flag for $525,000.
Nevertheless it nonetheless took months to deliver the American historical past relic again to life, Lisowski stated, because the flag then went via a monthslong restoration course of on the St. John the Divine’s Textile Conservation Laboratory.
Lab director Marlene Eidelheit recalled the flag was completely examined and handled for a number of tears and grime — but it surely “wasn’t dangerous” so far as presidential Civil Battle-era artifacts go.
The flag joins a swath of Lincoln memorabilia in Keens’ upstairs eating room, together with political cartoons; a well-known Bixby letter from Lincoln to a Union military widow who misplaced her 5 sons within the Civil Battle; and a stained program {that a} close by framed article claims Lincoln was holding at Ford’s Theatre when he was fatally shot by John Wilkes Sales space.
The flag additionally serves as the primary Twenty first-century addition to Keens’ intensive “Lincoln Room” assortment, and the newest acquisition since no less than the Nineteen Fifties.
“Visitors come to Keens not only for a meal, however for a way of historical past; and The Abraham Lincoln Casket Flag 1865 is likely one of the most significant artifacts we’ve got ever had the privilege to show,” Lisowski added.
“Keens has at all times been a steward of American historical past, and welcoming this extraordinary piece into our Lincoln Room permits us to honor President Lincoln’s legacy in a approach that feels each intimate and profound.”
