Our Federal Hall National Memorial, in partnership with the National Park Service, will launch on July 4, 2026, as New York City, New York Harbor, and Downtown Manhattan patriotically unfurls as the epicenter of America’s 250th commemoration. The momentum builds during 2024-2025, when New York City celebrates its 400th birthday.
Federal Hall National Memorial is a place of firsts, the authentic site where history actually happened, where the American Founders convened to deliberate and decipher the most pressing issues of their time.
In 527 days, the consensus establishing the United States of America, our revolutionary new form of representative government, began at Federal Hall in New York City, the nation’s First Capital under the Constitution.
Here, the First Congress met and inaugurated the First President setting the benchmark for its most prolific sessions in history. Here, among its greatest accomplishments was the drafting of our First Freedoms, a declaration of individual rights celebrated today as the Bill of Rights, establishing America as the world’s most enduring democracy.
The conversations of our Founders continue – in different contexts and disparate dialogues, storied in the evolution, as we continue to strive towards a more perfect Union.
As we approach the 250th birthday of our nation, our aspirations are simple and auspicious: for millions of visitors to emerge transformed by their experience, inspired by the Founders’ struggle to reconcile the ideals and imperfections of our democracy, more confident that the government established here will survive and, through the enlightened civic engagement of the American people, fulfill its destiny as a civil, just, and vibrant society.
A New Day at Federal Hall
Few are aware of the sacred character of this historic landmark and memorial and the enormous opportunity afforded us to welcome over 17 million people who pass by annually and to invite them to step inside and discover this unheralded national treasure.
We will mount imaginative exhibitions, multi-disciplinary installations, educational programs, and ambitious awareness campaigns illuminating the Founders’ aspirations drawn from troves of authentic historical evidence telling the greatest story never told of how they “structured, stabilized, and secured” the new nation. We will share, too, how the dynamism of the city and of New Yorkers themselves contributed, as they still do to the nation’s growth and vitality. Graceful displays will feature storytelling from an extraordinary array of documents, illustrations, and ephemera gleaned from our Manhattan Sites Archive of the National Park Service, and on loan from museums, libraries, and private collectors.
New Day Exhibition Concepts and Programs
BRC Imagination Arts, Ralph Applebaum & Associates International and 59 Productions have created the facility concept design, which utilizes 30,000 square foot building to create the Federal Hall narrative arc. Click to enlarge images in a slideshow viewer.
“The goal is for visitors to emerge from Federal Hall transformed by their experience, engaged by the abiding struggle to reconcile the ideals and imperfections of our democracy, and inspired by the promise of the future.”
Mandate of the Historians, Writers and Artist Advisory Working Group
Pocantico Center Meeting, September 2018
Accomplishments
In 2015, Federal Hall was designated a “National Treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy has subsequently focused on the restoration and preservation of the landmark building as well as laying plans for a New Day and securing funding to fulfill this exciting vision.
The Conservancy is a 501 [c] 3 non-profit organization officially sanctioned by the National Park Service for this fundraising endeavor. The Conservancy has already raised $8+ million for Federal Hall to accomplish the following:
- Public programs and activations in the visual arts, literary arts and humanities, including four historic walking tours integrating Federal Hall into the development of New York City and America.
- Cataloguing and digitization of the archival collections of Federal Hall and other national park historic sites in Manhattan.
- Emergency restoration of the iconic Wall Street steps and statue of George Washington.
- Primary scholarship for New Day at Federal Hall with the First Federal Congress Project at George Washington University, editors of a 22-volume Documentary History.
- Facility concept design for New Day at Federal Hall which utilizes 30,000 square feet and grand rotunda dome by BRC Imagination Arts, Ralph Applebaum & Associates International, and 59 Productions, premiere museum experience and design firms.
- Sustainability plan with operational financial model and traffic study for New Day at Federal Hall by Management Resources and AECOM respectively.
Restoration work has already been completed on the colossal bronze statue of George Washington. The statue was erected in 1883—created by sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward.