The seat of the U.S. government has, since 1800, been in Washington, D.C. But, at first, it was briefly situated on New York’s City’ Wall Street, a stone’s throw from where Hamilton first made his postwar home in Manhattan.

This structure was erected at the turn of the 17th and 18th Centuries to serve as New York’s City Hall.

George Washington took the oath of office and was inaugurated here on April 30, 1789. Hamilton was not in attendance. But he and his family were reportedly watching from his balcony close by at 57 Wall Street.

As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was present for the first few sessions of the earliest U.S. Congresses before the government moved to Philadelphia in 1795. Federal Hall at that point briefly returned to its original function as home to the New York City government. When Hamilton was practicing law in New York, he returned an untold number of times to this building on various sorts of business, outfitted in black robe with white powdered wig, to argue cases.

The contemporary building known as Federal Hall and serving as a museum—which lies close to the New York Stock Exchange—is a reproduction of what Hamilton would have known. The original building came down in 1812 (though not at the hand of British invaders, which is more than can be said for the White House and the U.S. Capitol).

It was at Federal Hall on July, 18, 1795, that Hamilton was hissed at by a crowd protesting Washington’s unpopular Jay Treaty. Hamilton challenged at least one political rival in the crowd—James Nicholson—to a duel. That potentially fatal interview, at least, fizzled out before any misadventure could come of it.