The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had been loaning out its public buildings to various bodies of national political character for some time. When the seat of federal government shifted from New York to Philadelphia in 1790, the City of Brotherly Love needed an appropriate accommodation for the U.S. Congress—fast.

The Philadelphia City Council decided to volunteer this county courthouse, on the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut Streets, for the purpose. But the city had first to undertake refurnishing and re-fitting the building at a frantic pace, in order to make it ready.

Here, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified; Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee were admitted as the first new states to the Union after the founding “Old Thirteen”; and Alexander Hamilton helped pushed through the legislation that would make his legacy as the architect of the modern U.S. economy, including the establishment of the First Bank of the United States.

Congress gathered here from December, 1790 to May, 1800, and afterwards commenced convening in its permanent accommodation in Washington, D.C. The building returned thereafter to serving as a County Courthouse.

Hamilton additionally would have been in person at Congress Hall during two events of great consequence.

One was the second inauguration of George Washington on March 4, 1793.

The other was the funeral of that esteemed statesman. George Washington died after a short illness on December 14, 1799. After intimate mourning commemorations at his Mount Vernon home in Virginia, his body was transported to Philadelphia for a national funeral procession that began at Congress Hall, transited the city with “a solemn and august pageantry,” and ended at the city’s German Lutheran Church.

In addition to the above, Congress Hall was also where the War Department kept its offices. Thus, Hamilton reported intermittently to the War Department after his promotion to Major General of the Provisional Army during the Quasi War with France from 1798-1799.