Start With a Drink They'd Recognize, Then Visit the Future They Imagined
This is a Presidents' Day pairing that actually makes sense: familiar ground first, then a look at what came next.
Fraunces Tavern
Start with a drink at Fraunces Tavern, a place George Washington would actually recognize. In 1783, he gathered his officers here to say farewell.
Today, you can walk into the same building and enjoy traditional American food with modern twits, classic and contemporary cocktails, or a well-earned cold ale. (Avocado toast? That one might give him pause.)
Upstairs, the museum traces America's Path to Liberty, grounding the experience in history before you step back into the present.
Afterward, you're perfectly positioned to head toward the harbor and the next chapter of the story.
The Statue of Liberty
The Founders never saw her. Dedicated in 1886, the statue was a gift from France to the United States, commemorating American independence and shared ideals.
Option 1: The Official Visit
Up Close, On Purpose
The Statue of Liberty official tour includes a ferry to Liberty Island, access to the grounds, and Ellis Island museum entry. It's the full experience but can be slow and requires planning. It's totally worth it if you want to stand at the base and take in the scale.
Option 2: The Staten Island Ferry
Free, Efficient, Still Impressive
If you want a faster, more casual option, hop on the Staten Island Ferry.
- It's free
- Runs frequently
- Passes close enough for great views and photos
You won't step foot on the island, but you'll see the statue from the water. No planning, no ticketing, no pressure. Very New York.
Float in NY Harbor and look back at the city. The scale, the ambition, the contradictions. This is part of the future they imagined, and one that's still being shaped.
A solid Presidents' Day reminder, without a lecture.
The Met: A Cultural Legacy That Would Send a Founding Father into a Coma
Walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art would already be overwhelming for a Founding Father, but the part that really tips it into coma territory is this:
The Met exists because Americans wanted what Europe had.
In 1866, a group of Americans meeting in Paris agreed the United States needed a national art museum, something on the level of the great European institutions. The idea was born overseas, inspired by places like the Louvre, and brought home to New York.
That connection would have meant something very specific to Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson lived in Paris from 1784 to 1789 and visited the Louvre during its early public years. He attended the Salon of 1787, admired works by Jacques-Louis David, and famously praised The Death of Socrates. He believed art, architecture, and culture were essential to the life of a republic.
What he would not have expected is this: everything under one roof. (System Overload!)
Today, the Met holds one of the most comprehensive art collections in the world—and seeing it assembled in New York would be deeply destabilizing in the best way.
- Antiquity galleries with Greek and Roman sculpture the Founders revered in theory but never imagined strolling through indoors;
- Washington Crossing the Delaware, their very own history reframed as heroic myth, hanging among centuries of global art;
- Period rooms, entire European interiors removed, reconstructed, and preserved as if time travel were routine;
- Contemporary Art that answers no questions and asks plenty more, the exact opposite of an 18th-century academy's ideals.
The same young nation that once looked to Europe for cultural validation now holds an institution that stands comfortably alongside its inspirations. A full-circle moment, quietly extraordinary and elegantly extravagant.
For a Founding Father who believed culture was something America might one day grow into? Lights out.
Now, cross Central Park from east to west, letting the city fall away for a few quiet blocks before the timeline expands completely.
The American Museum of Natural History: Where the Timeline Breaks
If the Met overwhelms the Founding Fathers with human ambition, the American Museum of Natural History does something far more destabilizing: it quietly removes humans from the center of the story.
The Founding Fathers lived and died without knowing dinosaurs were real. The first dinosaur was scientifically identified in 1824, decades after their time, and the very word dinosaur didn't exist during the American Revolution. Standing beneath the massive skeletons on display here, creatures that lived, thrived, and vanished long before humanity, would force a recalibration. This isn't myth or speculation. It's evidence. History suddenly stretches backward in ways they never imagined.
From there, the museum lays out the natural world with calm authority. Evolution is presented without drama. Ecosystems are explained as interconnected systems. Species are shown not as isolated marvels, but as part of a much larger web. The methods: observation, classification, reason, would feel familiar to Enlightenment minds. The scale would not. Humanity is no longer the culmination of the story, just one chapter within it.
The experience reaches its quiet conclusion at the Hayden Planetarium. Stars, galaxies, and billions of years unfold in every direction. After antiquity at the Met, revolution on canvas, and extinction in bone, the universe itself enters the frame. There's no argument here, no lesson to debate, just perspective.
This is where the Founding Father slowly lies down, under a giant blue whale.
Broadway History, Remixed and Won by Lottery
New York does history differently, especially on Broadway.
Hamilton turns the founding of the nation into a high-energy hip-hop musical, complete with rap battles, standing ovations, and sold-out crowds. Explaining this to Alexander Hamilton would be… difficult.
Then there's SIX, where the wives of King Henry VIII take the stage as a pop girl group, reclaiming their stories with stadium-style anthems. An impressive glow-up from an era defined by corsets, contagion, and outcomes that were decidedly less fun.
Tickets? Acquired digitally. On your phone. Sometimes the day before the show.
Broadway Lottery, Explained
Enter a digital lottery online or via an app, get notified if you win, and buy discounted Broadway tickets, often $45–$65, for same-day or next-day performances.
The idea that you can enter a lottery for world-class theater without leaving your room on a glowing rectangle that fits in your pocket, would be completely unfathomable to men who waited weeks for letters to arrive.
Try it anyway. Presidents' Day weekend rewards optimism!
Resources:
Hamilton App: Google Play | Apple
New York City today is loud, inventive, indulgent, and gloriously excessive. The Founding Fathers didn't imagine this version of America, but they absolutely fought for the freedom to build it. As we move toward the Semiquincentennial, this Presidents' Day weekend is the perfect time to experience a version of the city that would have completely undone them.
History has its eyes on us. New York City, as always, is happy to perform.