Photo Friday

One of the many spectacular faces in terracotta of the Brooklyn Historical Society, watching over Pierrepont Street since 1881. Architect: George B. Post, Sculptor, Olin Levi Warner.

PhotoFriday: Hamilton at Trinity Church

After watching most of the HBO John Adams series recently, I paid a visit to Alexander Hamilton’s monument in Trinity Church’s burial ground in Lower Manhattan as well as checked in at Hamilton Grange in Upper Manhattan. Hamilton is not my favorite founding father, but his life story is one I certainly have enjoyed knowing. (For those keeping score, I’ve always been partial to the gentlemen of Virginia – Jefferson and Madison – and Franklin.) He was a merchant accounting prince of the West Indies as a teen, Federalist Papers author, and husband to Gen. Philip Schuyler’s daughter Eliza. And of course, we know the familiar story of the foggy duel with Aaron Burr which ended Alexander’s life 50 years before Eliza’s.

As my FotoFriday installment, here’s Hamilton’s monument. It is inscribed thusly:

The Corporation of Trinity Church has erected this
MONUMENT
In Testimony of Their Respect
For
The PATRIOT of Incorruptible INTEGRITY
The SOLDIER of Approved VALOUR
The STATESMAN of Consummate WISDOM
Whose TALENTS and VIRTUE will be admitted
BY
Grateful Posterity
Long after this MARBLE shall have mouldered into
DUST
He died July 12, 1804 Aged 47