Where Alexander Hamilton Died: The Bayard House (1804)
William Bayard's house · near Jane & Horatio Streets
In Hamilton's day
Hamilton was rowed back across the river to the country house of his friend William Bayard Jr. in Greenwich Village. Eliza and their children came to his bedside. He died the next afternoon, about 31 hours after the duel.
In 1804 Greenwich was a separate country village, about two miles north of a city that ended around today's Canal Street. Wealthy families kept summer houses there, and New Yorkers fled to it during yellow fever outbreaks. The boat landed on the Greenwich shore at the foot of today's Jane Street, and the Bayard house stood right on the waterfront, much closer than Hamilton's own home downtown.
Visiting today
A 1936 plaque at 82 Jane Street marks the spot, but that building dates from 1886 and historians place the Bayard house slightly north, near present Horatio Street. Treat the plaque as approximate.
Nearby in Hamilton's day
- Richmond Hill1790s
Hilltop estate that served as Washington's headquarters in 1776 and later as Aaron Burr's home.
- Manhattan Well1800
Elma Sands' body was found in this well in 1799. In the 1800 murder trial Hamilton and Burr jointly defended the accused, Levi Weeks.
- Bayard's Hill redoubt1776
The city's largest earthwork fort, on high ground near today's Grand Street. Hamilton's artillery company was posted here in the summer of 1776.