In New York and Elsewhere History is Selling Real Estate

by Pearl Duncan

Pearl Duncan is completing a book about Wall Street’s history. In her articles and books she focuses on the mainstream bold-names and well as the supporting cast of ancestors who are unknown, especially those who were African Americans.

History sells real estate, especially when it dramatizes an event, or memorializes, reenergizes or idolizes an individual. And that is what is happening in New York. The city’s real estate market is fueled by a number of artistic and creative projects with a historical theme.

This history-pushes-real-estate-to-the-limit trend is supported by a statement made by a local historian who, describing the impact of the popular Broadway musical, Hamilton, commented, “Now it’s all abuzz. I think more people are interested in history, and there’s more of a community and spirit here keeping that history alive.” The “here” he is describing is the New York City neighborhood named for Alexander Hamilton.

The local historian was referring to the renewed interest in the neighborhoods where Hamilton settled in New York – not only Wall Street but uptown, where he had his country residence. That residence, Hamilton Grange, is preserved and is getting more visitors now thanks to the Broadway musical.

So why are two neighborhoods, one named after Alexander Hamilton, the area called Hamilton Heights, and one named after George Washington, the nearby, Washington Heights, experiencing a boom? The historian said prior to the popularity of the show, that area was quiet, and even more important, was affordable. One of the fascinating patterns of the trend of history-revitalizing-interest-in-neighborhoods is that the areas then become unaffordable for average income people and become more attractive to high-income residents. High-income residents have followed artists into neighborhoods for years, and now they are following history.

I saw this pattern when I wrote many articles about the history of New York. Living across the street from Robert DeNiro, I noticed that he developed restaurants and hotels with an eye toward preservation and respect for the underlying architecture and history. I wrote articles about the people who occupied many different sites over the centuries, including the site where my apartment, my stores and other businesses and attractions stood.

It wasn’t just DeNiro but also businesses like Whole Foods that have showed respect for the history lying in the ground beneath their businesses. When Whole Foods opened one of its first stores in Manhattan, the Tribeca Whole Foods, officials read articles about Lower Manhattan and the people who occupied the area at different times over a 400-year period, and invited me to do an interactive presentation about its site and the surrounding World Trade Center and Wall Street area. The children and adults were fascinated to see what stood at the site where they now resided. They clicked an interactive map that showed the attractions of the place from the 17th century to the present.

New York celebrates its history, but what I discovered is that the rich capitalize on this history.

Soon after the Whole Foods event, I received a telephone call from a developer who asked if I had any more historical information about a site featuring commercial buildings that he was in the process of converting to condominiums. That call was not as bad as the advertisement I saw where another developer had quoted one of my articles about the local history in his real estate ad – without crediting me or the source of the detail. The ad for the condos – a high-rise glass tower – encourage multimillion dollar buyers to connect with the history of the Founding Fathers. The ad claimed that buyers can connect with the history of the places where the Founding Fathers met to discuss building a nation and a national economy. I realized then that my articles about the history of places where a wide range of people of all incomes and backgrounds lived and worked were contributing to an imbalanced attraction. They were attracting the 1-percenters and gentrifying the 99-percenters.

This brings me to the recent news about the impact of the Lin-Manuel Miranda created musical, Hamilton, on quiet or neglected neighborhoods that bear the Hamilton name. The article I alluded to earlier, “The ‘Hamilton’ Effect: Upper Manhattan Real Estate Gets Boost from Musical,” describes the increased interest and higher prices in the Hamilton-named neighborhood since the Broadway musical with rap lyrics and a multiethnic cast stirred interest in this Founding Father. Now, there are increased house tours, which reflect the history and residents, especially Founding Fathers, from colonial and post-colonial eras. This renewed interest is happening even when other historians are questioning the historical fact-checking of this very creative Broadway production about a Founding Father.

In an article in the New York Times, “ ‘Hamilton’ and History: Are They in Sync?” at the time of this writing, the article already had 545 comments from readers, most commenters pointing out that the historians should, chill. They say a Broadway musical which inspires people who see the show or read about it to then read relevant history books, is not a bad thing. The historians, many who have written fact-based works about the Founding Fathers, stick to their criticism of this creative musical. Now that the musical has inspired a real estate boom in sleepy overlooked neighborhoods, the debates will continue.

Is a Broadway musical about the Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, good for New York, for the nation and for viewers and readers, or not?