Hamilton fans boost tourism
Hit Broadway musical sparks increased interest in historic sites
Historic sites connected to Alexander Hamilton are getting a lot more visitors than they used to, thanks to a little Broadway show you might have heard about.
Fans of the musical Hamilton, which won 11 Tony Awards, are hunting down every Hamilton spot they can think of, from his home in Harlem, to his burial site in Lower Manhattan, to Hamilton Park in Weehawken, N.J., near the duelling grounds where he was shot by Aaron Burr.
Kerissa Bearce, 35, of Fort Worth, Tex., visited all those sites and many more when she came to New York to see the show with two friends. “I pretty much don’t remember anything about the founding of my country, but now I’m learning all of it,” Bearce said.
Bearce is among thousands of Hamilton fans boosting visitor numbers at historic sites that in the past were barely on tourists’ radars. Hamilton Grange, his Harlem home and a National Park site, had as many visitors in the first five months of this year as it did in all of 2015 — more than 35,000 people. And that’s a 75-per-cent increase over the 21,000 visitors who toured the Grange in 2014, the year before Hamilton opened. Artifacts at the site include a piano that Hamilton’s daughter Angelica played. A replica of the instrument is featured in the show.
But fans are also finding their way to more obscure spots, like the Schuyler-Hamilton House in Morristown, N.J., where Hamilton courted his wife Eliza.
“We have five-year-olds, 16-yearolds, 30-year-olds coming here now,” said Pat Sanftner, who gives tours of the Schuyler-Hamilton House. “We did not have that audience in our museum before. We had 60-year-olds. It’s wonderful to have these conversations now with visitors. We’re not just teaching. They’re questioning us and they’re thinking.”
Tourists have always visited Hamilton’s tomb in the graveyard at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. But now, not only are more people paying their respects, but they’re also looking for the graves of Hamilton’s wife, sister-in-law, son and his buddy Hercules Mulligan. “Visitors also now leave flowers, stones, coins, notes, even a potted plant, at Hamilton’s monument and on Eliza’s stone just in front of it,” said Trinity spokeswoman Lynn Goswick.
The show’s star and creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, wrote part of Hamilton at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. The mansion’s executive director Carol Ward estimates that half of their visitors now come because of the show. “We’ve been riding the wave,” Ward said. “The show has gotten people interested in history in a completely new, fresh way.”
The Morris-Jumel Mansion is known for a dinner party hosted there by President George Washington for his cabinet, attended by Hamilton, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (A different dinner party depicted in the show’s song The Room Where It Happens took place at Jefferson’s residence, now marked with a plaque at 57 Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan.) But the mansion has a Burr connection too: Burr married the rich widow who owned the house. She later divorced Burr, and her lawyer was Hamilton’s son.
Other pilgrimage sites include Hamilton statues in Central Park and at Columbia University. A sign outside 82 Jane St. in Greenwich Village marks the site where Hamilton was taken to die after the duel left him mortally wounded.
Some destinations are advertising in the Broadway Playbill for Hamilton, including the Caribbean island of Nevis, where Hamilton was born, and the Museum of American Finance on Wall Street, where Hamilton founded the Bank of New York.