Federal Hall

26 Wall St, New York, NY 10005, USA

New York

state

NYC

county

NYC

city

MUSEUM

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Federal Hall is a memorial and historic site at 26 Wall Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The current Greek Revival–style building, completed in 1842 as the Custom House, is owned by the United States federal government and operated by the National Park Service as a national memorial called the Federal Hall National Memorial. The memorial is named for an earlier Federal stylebuilding on this same site, completed in 1703 as City Hall, which the government of the newly independent United States used as its capital building during the 1780s.

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The original structure on the site was built as New York's second City Hall from 1699 to 1703, on Wall Street, in what is today the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. This structure had been designed by James Evetts to replace Stadt Huys, the city's first administrative center. It measured two stories high, with wings extending west and east. The stones from Wall Street's old fortifications were used for City Hall. Also housed at City Hall was a public library (which had 1,642 volumes by the year 1730), as well as a firehouse with two fire engines imported from London. The upper stories were used as a debtors' prison.

STATE HOUSE

EST. 1699

City Hall was first remodeled in 1765, when a third story was added. That October, delegates from nine of the Thirteen Colonies met as the Stamp Act Congress in response to the levying of the Stamp Act by the Parliament of Great Britain. Drawn together for the first time in organized opposition to British policy, the attendees drafted a message to King George III, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, claiming entitlement to the same rights as the residents of Britain and protesting the colonies' "taxation without representation".

After the American Revolution, City Hall was home to the Congress of the Confederation of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The first meeting of the Confederation Congress took place at City Hall on April 13, 1784.

The building was renamed Federal Hall in 1789 when New York was chosen as the nation’s first seat of government under the Constitution. The 1st Congress met there beginning on March 4, 1789. The first inauguration of George Washington, the first-ever inauguration of a President of the United States, occurred on the balcony of the building on April 30, 1789. Many of the most important legislative actions in the United States occurred with the 1st Congress at Federal Hall. For example, on September 25, 1789, the United States Bill of Rights was proposed in Federal Hall.