Newly widowed Chester Arthur held a series of patronage positions and was relatively unknown to the public before securing the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket of 1880. When the Garfield-Arthur ticket won, it marked the first time Arthur held elective office. In mere months, the assassination of President Garfield propelled him to the presidency.

After a period of mourning, the Arthur White House entertained lavishly. The president also worked with famed designer Louis Tiffany to extensively refurbish the White House, installing a fifty-foot wall of Tiffany glass in the main hall. (It was torn down during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.) Arthur also presented a stained-glass window to nearby St. John’s Church in his wife’s memory, asking that it be placed where he could see it from his White House.

Though Arthur had benefited from political patronage jobs, he sought to make changes to the corrupt system after entering the White House. He was the first president to initiate civil service reform through the Pendleton Act.

Ill with kidney disease, Arthur reluctantly sought the Republican Party nomination in 1884 but lost to his secretary of state. He returned home to Manhattan, where his health rapidly declined. He died in November 1886.