“I am not very nice,” wrote George Washington to James Madison on March 30, 1789. Washington expressed this probably only slightly ironic bit of candor regarding the project of locating a house in New York City for the new president to inhabit once the new government under the U.S. Constitution became operational.

Fully cognizant of his duty to make up as he went everything it meant to be a president, Washington knew the executive lodgings had to command respect yet not seem overly luxurious, and certainly not monarchical.

Washington also had some personal concerns he wanted addressed about where he would lay his head. He wanted some privacy, and he didn’t want too many social obligations foisted upon him at once.

“I mean to avoid private families on the one hand, so on another, I am not desirous of being placed early in a Situation for entertaining. Therefore, hired (private) lodging would not only be more agreeable to my own wishes, but, possibly, more consistent with the dictates of sound policy,” he wrote in the same letter.

A joint committee of the Senate and the House arranged, as part of the national budget, to lease Washington a handsome mansion owned by Samuel Osgood, a prominent politician who secured the title to the property after marrying his wife, the daughter of a New York merchant. (In Hamilton’s time, in most all cases, all of a woman’s property was transmitted to her husband upon marriage. Washington himself multiplied his net worth handsomely after marrying Martha Dandirdge Custis on January 6, 1759).

The Osgood House stood at the corner of Pearl and Cherry Streets and had been furnished almost entirely with fittings purchased by the Continental Congress. Washington, his wife, staff, and enslaved people lived here from April 30, 1789 until February 23, 1790.