Federal Hall is a historic building at 26 Wall Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The current Greek Revival–style building, completed in 1842 as the Custom House, is owned by the United States federal government and operated by the National Park Service as a national memorial called the Federal Hall National Memorial. The memorial is named after a Federal style building on the same site, completed in 1703 as City Hall, which the government of the newly independent United States used during the 1780s.
The original building served as New York's first City Hall and hosted the 1765 Stamp Act Congress before the American Revolution. After the United States became an independent nation, the building served as meeting place for the Congress of the Confederation, the nation's first central government under the Articles of Confederation, from 1785 to 1789. With the establishment of the United States federal government in 1789, it was renamed Federal Hall, as it hosted the 1st Congress and was where George Washington was sworn in as the nation’s first president. It was demolished in 1812.
The current structure, designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, was built as the U.S. Custom House for the Port of New York before serving as a Subtreasury building from 1862 to 1925. The current national memorial commemorates the historic events that occurred at the previous structure. The current building is constructed of Tuckahoe marble. Its architectural features include a colonnade of Doric columns, as well as a domed rotunda designed by the sculptor John Frazee. The facade and part of the interior are New York City designated landmarks, and the building is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
First structure
In the 17th century, the area north of Wall Street was occupied by John Damen's farm. Damen sold the land in 1685 to captain John Knight, an officer of Thomas Dongan's administration. Knight resold the land to Dongan, and Dongan resold it in 1689 to Abraham de Peyster and Nicholas Bayard. Both de Peyster and Bayard served as Mayors of New York.
City Hall
The original structure on the site was built as New York's second City Hall from 1699 to 1703, on Wall Street, in what is today the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. This structure had been designed by James Evetts to replace Stadt Huys, the city's first administrative center. It measured two stories high, with wings extending west and east. The stones from Wall Street's old fortifications were used for City Hall. Also housed at City Hall was a public library (which had 1,642 volumes by the year 1730), as well as a firehouse with two fire engines imported from London. The upper stories were used as a debtors' prison.
In 1735, John Peter Zenger, an American newspaper publisher, was arrested for committing libel against the British royal governor and was imprisoned and tried there. His acquittal on the grounds that the material he had printed was true established freedom of the press as it was later defined in the Bill of Rights.
City Hall was first remodeled in 1765, when a third story was added. That October, delegates from nine of the Thirteen Colonies met as the Stamp Act Congress in response to the levying of the Stamp Act by the Parliament of Great Britain. Drawn together for the first time in organized opposition to British policy, the attendees drafted a message to King George III, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, claiming entitlement to the same rights as the residents of Britain and protesting the colonies' "taxation without representation". The Sons of Liberty took over the building from the British during the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Afterward, City Hall served as the meeting place for the Continental Congress.
Federal Hall
After the American Revolution, City Hall was home to the Congress of the Confederation of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The first meeting of the Confederation Congress took place at City Hall on April 13, 1784.