'...so conceived and so dedicated...'

The living closeness of its history is one of the great things about the United States. It is almost as if the nation has a living constitution peopled by the great characters of its history.

On Monday night we came across the following buildings all within a couple of blocks of each other:

1. the building where George and Ira Gershwin lived, 1925-1931, and:

2. the Morris-Jumel Mansion from where Washington conducted his defence of New York in 1776.

But there is more to it than that.

Over on Staten Island yesterday, I came across a street named after General Schuyler.

and, this block of 1960s(?) flats, named after Schuyler's son-in-law, the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was, of course, another of those great geniuses with whose presence the USA was blessed at the time of its founding.

It is so constituted.