Alexander Hamilton’s northern Manhattan summer house, the Grange, built in 1802 two years before he was killed, is about to be moved to a new location at W. 141st St. and Hamilton Terrace. The Grange was already moved once before, in 1889, as Manhattan’s street grid crept northward. At its present site, on Convent Avenue between 141st and 142nd streets, though it still wears an air of elegance, it is jammed between a church and an apartment building, and its porches have been torn off. The National Park Service, which owns it, plans to move it to a park around the corner and restore it.

But this was the detail that caught my eye from this morning’s NYTimes (p. B5): “Insights have also been gleaned from what the architects did not find, like evidence of a dumbwaiter that was once supposed to have existed. Mr. Waite [the architect] interpreted this as a sign that much of the Hamiltons’ family life took place downstairs, close to the kitchen. “This house was built to be operated without slaves,” he said.