Posted on 06/09/2008 9:10:04 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - Two hundred and eighty tons of American history were on the move Saturday in Harlem.
The home of Alexander Hamilton, who conceived the country's banking system and was killed in a duel with a political rival, rolled inch by inch down a Harlem hillside to its new location overlooking a park.
"This was the only home Hamilton ever owned," said Steve Laise, a National Park Service official dressed in a vest, tie and pants typical of the 1800's. "It represented the consummation of Hamilton's lifelong dream — a successful social position for a man who came to the American colonies as a penniless 17-year-old born out of wedlock in the West Indies."
But the brilliant, charismatic Hamilton, who became a lawyer, helped pen the Constitution and served as the country's first treasury secretary, structuring taxation and government bonds. He eventually moved to New York, where he founded the New York Post and the Bank of New York.
Earlier this month, Hamilton's house — squeezed between a church and an apartment building — was hoisted 40 feet into the air, with steel beams and cribbings helping it clear the portico of St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Starting at about 7 a.m. Saturday, it rolled slowly down West 141st Street, taking three hours to travel a block and a half to the northwest corner of St. Nicholas Park.
There, the 206-year-old structure will be secured into its third spot, overlooking the bucolic city-owned park.
On a sweltering Saturday, it was alive with families enjoying picnics.
The slope above was filled with men who might easily have lived in Hamilton's time, dressed in broad-brimmed black hats, cotton shirts and denim overalls. They are members of Pennsylvania's German Baptist religious group, which owns Wolfe House & Building Movers, the Bernville, Penn.-based company used for the high-tech relocation.
The workers operating the machinery, including bulldozers pushing mounds of earth, got a special exemption from a law requiring anyone at a construction site to wear a protective helmet. Their wives and children staged a picnic on a knoll near Hamilton's lifted house, with its old, wood-beamed basement ceiling visible, plaster peeling.
Urban affairs expert Myron Magnet explained the importance of the pale yellow, Federalist-style house as the chimneyed structure hovered above the ground on a mammoth hydraulic dolly, elegant drapes still hanging in the windows.
"Hamilton was the founder of the financial system that made New York the economic engine of the world," Magnet said. "This is a monument to his legacy — the America we have now."
When he built Hamilton Grange in 1802 for his family, what he called his "sweet project" was a 33-acre country estate at the highest point of upper Manhattan, with sweeping views of the Hudson and Harlem rivers. The home was designed by architect John McComb Jr., who also created New York's City Hall.
The house is now part of Harlem's Hamilton Heights neighborhood of brick rowhouses, an area quickly being gentrified.
Because of development, the house was initially moved in 1889. Then, it traveled a few blocks from its original site to the spot it occupied until Saturday, on Convent Avenue.
The three locations where Hamilton's house has been set since 1802 were all part of his original estate.
He left home for the last time in 1804 for Weehawken, N.J., to face political nemesis and Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel that took Hamilton's life. The faceoff capped a period of the temperamental Hamilton's life in which "he was sidelined, he had no national office, while all his friends had been president," Magnet said.
Congress made the home a national memorial in 1962, but talks about moving it to a better setting dragged for decades. The move and restoration is expected to cost at least $8.4 million. Plans include bringing back the original tables, chairs, a piano and a silver wine cooler.
In this photo provided by the National Park Service, the Hamilton Grange National Memorial makes a slow turn from Convent Avenue onto 141 St. Street in New York, Saturday, June 7, 2008. The two-century-old house that once belonged to founding father Alexander Hamilton was moved to a new spot in a park located in Harlem section of New York City. (AP Photo/National Park Service, Mindi Rambo)
National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/hagr
Hamilton Grange, the home of Alexander Hamilton from 1802 - 1804
Hamilton as a federalist was despised by Jefferson, a republican (not in today's sense). He was also highly suspect by Adams for different reasons. Washington was somewhat behind him, or perhaps just that Hamilton was better able to manipulate the aging Washington.
Hamilton Grange National Memorial
It will have graffiti on it soon.
Thanks for the ping.
Highly appropriate inasmuch as Hamilton was strong for a CENTRAL BANK here (which was eventually thrown out) and would have been a big fan of our current INFLATION GENERATOR (inflation=unwarranted expansion of money and credit), the FEDERAL RESERVE.
The FED has enabled the politicians to make virtual wards of the state at least 4 generations of welfare recipients, many of whom live in places like Harlem.
Washington ultimately gave Hamilton the great honor of leading the most dangerous charge at Yorktown.
Washington was not an easy man to "manipulate" and he had his own (good) reasons to look with disfavor upon Jefferson.
They should have burned that prot-fascist’s house to the ground.
“It will have graffiti on it soon.”
.....my first thoughts exactly when I read the headline....
The specific rules in the Constitution for banking is that coins be made of gold and silver. Those rules are obviously not followed, though they have never been rescinded.
The current Federal Reserve bank was created in 1913 in a secret meeting of big New York bankers with a few foreign bankers representatives in attendance at a private island in Georgia. It was certainly not created by Alexander Hamilton.
You’re right. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation formed at a private meeting at the Jekyll Island Club. Interestingly, the Jekyll Island Club also had the first private telephone in the U.S.
Henry Flagler a Rockefeller partner and member of the Jekyll Island Club, didn’t like the weather there. It was a winter resort but got too cold for him most of the winter. In 1902 he went to Florida and bought Palm Beach and started the town. His family still owns the Breakers Hotel.
Palm Beach is still the summer home of most of the nation’s old money. In Season (December 15 to April 15) the wealthy open their “cottages” (mansions) for anywhere from a couple of weeks to the whole season. And the parties in these “cottages” are attended by the wealthiest people in the world.
However, just being wealthy will not get one an invitation to the best parties or clubs. The story goes that when JFK was president he wanted to play golf at the most exclusive club on the island. The management told him he wasn’t welcome. They supposedly told him that they had kings, emperors, and lots of presidents play there, but never had the son of a bootlegger play there and weren’t going to start with him.
Jekyll Island on the other hand, is now a middle class tourist destination mostly occupied in the summer. The Jekyll Island Club Hotel (formerly the clubhouse) is now open to anyone who wishes to stay there.
btt
BTTT
While I have never visited The Grange, I have often stopped by Gen. Hamilton’s grave. Thanks.
I was reading that people named their tomcats after Hamilton because he was a ladies’ man. Did you ever hear that?
Further, during the RevWar years, things were even MORE wide open...wars tend to do that. Soldiers never knew whether tomorrow's battle would be their last. That line (or things similar) was likely tried out on pretty patriot lasses from Georgia to Massachusetts with reasonable success.
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