Pennsylvania Avenue has also seen the sorrow of seven Presidential funeral processions, including processions for the four who died by assassination.

William Henry Harrison's body was escorted up the Avenue by twenty-six pallbearers, one for each state. The new president, John Tyler, as well as the Cabinet, the Diplomatic Corps, and fourteen militia companies made up the procession.

President Zachary Taylor was the next president to die in office, and his, July 13, 1850, funeral procession stretched for over two miles behind the hearse.

The death of President Abraham Lincoln, on April 15, 1865, shortly after beginning his second term, and just days after Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, resulted in an unprecedented outpouring of grief nationwide. The first president to die by assassination, Lincoln's body was escorted from the White House to the Capitol on April 19 by a cortege numbering 30,000. Arriving late and unable to take its assigned position, the 22nd Colored Infantry fell in at the head of the procession, while African-American lodge groups brought up its rear.

James Garfield, who was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station just off Pennsylvania Avenue on July 2, 1881, died of his wounds ten weeks later while attempting to recover at the New Jersey shore. Returned to Washington by train to that same station, Garfield's body was escorted up the Avenue to the Capitol by a procession that included the new president, Chester Arthur, and former president Grant.

Shot by an assassin in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901, President William McKinley's body was returned to Washington by train ten days later. On September 17, the dead presidents casket was escorted down the rain dampened Avenue from the White House to the Capitol. Carriages bearing the new President, Theodore Roosevelt, and former president Grover Cleveland preceded the marchers.

President Warren G. Harding died of a cerebral stroke in San Francisco on August 2, 1923. The funeral train arrived at Union Station on August 7th, and the next day, General John J. Pershing and a cavalry escort led the funeral procession from the White House to the Capitol.

Shot by an assassin in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy's funeral procession along the Avenue two days later was televised worldwide. The slain president's casket rode on the same caisson that had borne Franklin Roosevelt's body down Constitution Avenue eighteen years earlier, making Roosevelt the only President to die in office whose procession did not take place on Pennsylvania Avenue.