» New York City American Inquiry

Watercolor illustration of the Old City Hall on Wall Street, built in 1699, showing its classical architecture and surrounding trees.

New York’s old city hall, pictured above, was remodeled at the time of the Founding and renamed Federal Hall. By then, the building was 90 years old, having been built in 1699. It was the administrative center of old New York, housing not only the mayor’s office but the city firehouse and a debtor’s prison, as well as the municipal court.

After the Revolution, this building became the seat of the Confederation Congress of the United States. The Congress, then the nation’s sole governing body, met here from 1785 until the Constitution was ratified and put into operation (04 Mar 1789), two days after the Confederation was formally dissolved. The First Congress convened here. New York remained the temporary capital of the US for one year.

As the new government formed, leading New Yorkers began maneuvering to have their city chosen as the permanent capital that the Constitution required. They raised funds to transform the Old City Hall into a more imposing structure imbued with Federal style. They employed a French-born artist, Pierre (“Peter”) L’Enfant, an officer of the Army Corps of Engineers and veteran of the Revolution, to furnish the plans. Occasionally during 1788, the Confederation Congress met at Fraunces Tavern, as workmen renovated the old city hall.

RELATED:
Fortenbaugh, Robert, The Nine Capitals of the United States (Internet Archive)
Historic Battlefield Trust, Early Capitals of the United States
US House of Representatives, Meeting Places for the Continental Congresses and the Confederation Congress, 1774–1789

Image: from this source.

Four girls with ice skates walk down a street in New York’s Chinatown. It’s 1965, Mott Street, a sunny day—and late April, which heightens the incongruity of what we’re seeing. While the setting grounds them to their roots and history, the girls are American and of the moment, with loose hair styles, jackets, and dungarees. The photographer, Ed Ford of the New York World Telegram & Sun, captured a carefree, top-of-the-world moment effectively.

Since ice skating originated in Northern Europe and developed as a result of American and European innovations, the ice skates are a token of westernization (as well as a capacity to have fun).

Image: from this source.

This is the second in an occasional series on ice-skating.
Click back and forward to see the others.

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Cool girls with skates