Wall Street, New York City in Eighteenth Century

Wall Street, New York City, looking west toward Trinity Church on Broadway, with the old Federal Hall on the north side. Illustration signed by E.D.M., published in "The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton" by Allan McLane Hamilton, 1910.

George Washington was inaugurated in this Federal Hall, on April 30, 1789, as the first President of the United States of America. This historic building was demolished in 1812, after the City Hall moved to the present site. A neoclassic building was erected on the site, between 1833 and 1842, for the Custom House, now the Federal Hall Memorial National Historic Site. The Trinity Church represented is the second temple, completed in 1790 to replace the first temple destroyed by fire in 1776. The present neo-Gothic building was consecrated in 1846. Continue below...

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) arrived in New York for the first time in 1772 and entered King's College, now Columbia University, in 1773. From November, 1788, to March, 1789, he was Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from New York. He served as the first Secretary of the Treasury, from 1789 to 1795, during George Washington's presidency. He went to Philadelphia in August, 1790, when the U.S. capital moved from the City of New York to that city. He lived at 57 Wall Street (later, the site was occupied by the Merchants' Exchange building) before his removal to Philadelphia. In 1795 he returned to New York and occupied a small house at 56 Pine Street. In 1797, he moved to 58 Partition Street (now Fulton Street), then to Liberty Street, near Broadway. From there he went to 26 Broadway (site of the Standard Oil Building), where he lived until 1802.

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