Let’s face it: Alexander Hamilton is having his moment. The rest of the world knows two things about the Renaissance Man of the American Revolution, one old and one new: that he was killed in a duel with that era’s archetypal loathsome toad, Aaron Burr, and is now the subject of a brilliant Broadway musical. Okay — two and a half things: Many are also vaguely aware that Hamilton is one of only two non-presidents whose face appears on American paper currency. (Ben Franklin is the other.)
But for Lower Manhattan residents, this Founding Father has always been uniquely ours. And the fact that he is buried in our backyard, at Trinity Church, is the least of the reasons. In some ways, he was the first genuine New Yorker, the paradigm of a type that would later become instantly recognizable among generations of restless, ambitious strivers drawn irresistibly to Manhattan because no place else knew what to do with their outsized share of talent.
“Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything,” Alexander Hamilton, who helped win the Revolutionary War, and then helped find the money to pay for it — once said. His life is one focus of the upcoming Wall Street Collector’s Bourse.
Starting life as a nobody from nowhere (in this case, the illegitimate son of a minor Scottish landowner, born in the hinterlands of the Caribbean and soon orphaned), the adolescent Hamilton charmed the local gentry just enough to be sure they would cobble together some scholarship money and ship the penniless — but precocious — lad off to what was, even then, the center of the universe. Having landed in New York, he quickly raised a company of militia at age 20 (some accounts say 18), joined the fight for independence, and soon caught the eye of George Washington, who later appointed him America’s first Treasury chief (at age 34). In his spare time, he also founded the U.S. Coast Guard and was one of the driving forces behind the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Rotating out of government, Hamilton returned to our community (not for him the farms to which Washington and Jefferson would retire) and helped to found the New York Post and the Bank of New York, while also scheming with the man who would later kill him in a duel to finance the bank now known as Chase/JPMorgan (under the guise of bringing much-needed water to Lower Manhattan).
In short, if he had been born in the 1970s, Hamilton would today already have three or four presidential appointments behind him, and by now be a partner at Goldman Sachs, a board member at several museums and universities, and a regular guest on Charlie Rose-as well as a major investor in several promising media and technology startups. His name would also appear regularly on Page Six of the newspaper he started.
All of these sides of Hamilton, and more, will be on display in two exhibits at the Museum of American Finance, “Alexander Hamilton: Man with a Plan” and “Alexander Hamilton: Art and Popular Culture.” Both look not only at the man, but at the larger context of New York in the 1790s, when Lower Manhattan was not only the financial capital of the young nation, but also its seat of government, as well as its cultural and religious center. In a fitting symmetry, the Museum is located in the former Wall Street headquarters of the Bank of New York, which Hamilton midwifed.
During the weekend of October 21, admission to the Museum is free, in conjunction with the sixth annual Wall Street Collector’s Bourse, an exhibition, sale, and live auction of hundreds of works on paper from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries (many from the Old Print Shop and Arader Galleries), as well as currency, historic coins, vintage financial documents, photographs, and commemorative medals.
Free events and presentations during the Bourse will include, “Hamilton in Paterson: America’s First Tech Incubator,” by Leonard Zax, president of the Hamilton Partnership (on Friday at 12:30 pm); a talk by coin and medal designer Joel Iskowitz about “U.S. Presidents on American Coins” (Saturday at 12:30 pm); a presentation by Harley Spiller of “Fun Facts for Kids” (Saturday at 2:00 pm), and a look at Hamilton’s life by Robert Begley, president of the New York Heroes Society (Sunday at 1:00 pm).
The Bourse will also feature a raffle of two impossible-to-get tickets to Broadway’s “Hamilton: An American Musical.”
All of which seems likely to put a human face on the mythic figure whom Shakespeare might as well have had in mind when he wrote, “the elements mixed so well in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘this was a man.'”
The Wall Street Bourse, the exhibits, and numerous other events will all be held at the Museum of American Finance (48 Wall Street, at the corner of William Street), from Friday, October 21, through Sunday, October 23.
For more information, please browse MoaF.org (for the Museum), WallStreetBourse.org (for the Bourse), or AuctionsInternational.com (for the live auction).