Last Friday, Caitlin and I decided we should take an outing to the Museum of American Finance. A while back, I came across information on the museum and thought it might be interesting to see what it was all about. Also, I noticed that there are current exhibits on Alexander Hamilton and scandals affecting Wall Street that looked moderately interesting. So without any preconceived notions, we went and caught up on our financial history.
In total, we spent about an hour in the museum (it’s not that big) and walked away slightly impressed. The building that houses the museum is beautiful, so it was nice just to take in the architecture at the former headquarters of the Bank of New York. Once inside the museum, the highlights for me were The Financial Markets exhibit (specifically the lesson on trading floor hand signals… a language all its own that I will never master) and the Alexander Hamilton: Lineage and Legacy exhibit. The latter exhibit didn’t delve much deeper into the knowledge I acquired in high school, but it was interesting enough and there were some great original documents from Hamilton’s day we got the chance to look over.
So, if you are in the Wall Street area and want to take a mid-day break (or want a glimpse of Bernie Madoff’s custom-made Louisville Slugger baseball bat in the Scandal! exhibit), then I say stop by the museum. Not the most exciting museum in the city, but it had it perks… like the solid gold Monopoly set. I can only wonder what that is worth these days!
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