Pictures 23: Federal Hall National Memorial

Call me daft, but a lot of Revolutionary history is just too distant for me to truly grasp. I have known people who get just as jazzed about Revolutionary history as I would about something that happened yesterday, but I just can't do it. I think part of that may be because much Revolutionary history happened in the Northeast, and so much of the Northeast has changed irrevocably since that time, so it's hard to get a sense of what the landscape was really like back then.

That being said, Federal Hall National Memorial was still cool. It's down in the Financial District, just a stone's throw from the New York Stock Exchange, and is the site of George Washington's oath of office. It also originally housed the first Congress, Supreme Court and Executive Branch offices. Must have been a little crowded.


I was here. See? There I am!

7 more images below the jump. Click any one of 'em to make it bigger in Photobucket. Go ahead, click it!


Approaching from the East




It looks like Washington is all, "Simma down now, Wall Street."


This little section of Manhattan feels really weird - almost like you're down in a hole, in a cave. You can kind of get a sense of it here. Federal Hall is very short compared to the buildings surrounding it, and you have to go down a bit of a hill to get there, and the narrow streets feel a bit like tunnels as a result.






Okay, fess up - what klutz dropped the rock?