Inventing Alexander Hamilton

Welcoming visitors to the U.S. Treasury Building’s columned entrance, which faces Pennsylvania Avenue on the green edge of the National Mall, is a statue of Albert Gallatin. A Swiss-born sophisticate who was dandled as a child on Voltaire’s knee, Gallatin served as the nation’s fourth treasury secretary, first under Thomas Jefferson and then under James Madison. His statue was erected in 1947. For sixty years, Albert Gallatin has been represented as the founding father of the Treasury Department.

Behind the building stands Alexander Hamilton. The first treasury secretary, Hamilton was for all practical purposes the creator of modern American finance and the founding wealth of the United States. This is, by rights, his house, and he’d be horrified to see his mortal enemy, whom Hamilton once tried to hang for treason, lording over its entrance while his own likeness is consigned to its back end.
Boston Review