Hamilton Grange National Memorial

On Saturday I wanted a city adventure, and Trent was available so I sent him a link to my Google map of New York to-dos and told him to take his pick. He suggested that we do City College and Hamilton Grange, two things right next to each other and not far from either of us that neither of us had explored before.

We met at Hamilton Grange, the first (and only) home that Alexander Hamilton ever built and owned. He only lived there for two years before his death-by-duel, but it's now a National Memorial, controlled by the National Parks Service. The house has an interesting history beyond when the Hamilton family lived there: it had actually been moved twice before coming to rest in its current (and third) location in St. Nicholas Park. In 1889 it was moved half of a block east and two blocks south so the city could put in a street (adhering to the Manhattan grid).

In 2006 the house was moved again (you can still see its imprint on the apartment building next door) one block east to the park to allow for reconstruction and restoration of the original structure, and to provide a more spacious and suitable surrounding landscape. It seems absurd that this large house was completely moved two different times (and globally didn't really even change locations), but I'm glad that despite everything it has gone through that it not only remains, but has been restored to its original glory.

They offer free tours of the interior and when Trent and I went at 11am on Saturday we were the only two people on the "tour." It's a little awkward to receive a private tour of something as nerdy as the Alexander Hamilton house, but not having to endure other people's embarrassing questions was a definite upside.

The tour is relatively short and there are only three rooms available for viewing: the living room, dining room and Hamilton's study. The upstairs is off-limits due to fire code, as well as historians' inability to find any concrete evidence on how it was ever supposed to look.

The most interesting house fact we learned was about the three large windows facing the porch. Apparently houses back then were taxed by the number of doors they had, so in order to avoid larger taxes there are no doors to the porch. The windows actually open upwards in two sections, thereby turning them into doors in a roundabout, tax-evading way.

I also learned, or rather came to the realization that Hamilton wasn't actually a President, a fact on which I probably would have bet some Hamiltons of my own toward proving otherwise. He was a Founding Father, however, and a good friend of George Washington's (not to mention his appearance on the money, due to his position as Secretary of the Treasury) so he was still pretty important.

I love that I am still able to find things to explore so close to my apartment (Hamilton Grange is only two stops away on the 1 train) that feel like they're world's away. Since I'm not-so-secretly 80-years-old I will always be delighted by nerdy, historical tours — even more so when they're free. The best part of the tour, however, might have actually been the two other people who almost joined us, if not for the fact that they were running late picking up their Super Bowl tickets. If Hamilton Grange can make it onto the must-see list of tourists visiting New York for the Super Bowl, then maybe it's not so nerdy after all.*

*Nope, it's definitely still nerdy