Post founder Alexander Hamilton’s statue booted from Capitol Rotunda
That’s no way to treat a founder!
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is calling for the return of Alexander Hamilton’s statue to the Capitol Rotunda after it was abruptly removed Thursday.
An 1868 marble likeness of the first Treasury secretary, who founded The Post in 1801, was demoted to a downstairs hallway and replaced by a brand-new bronze statue of former President Harry S. Truman of Missouri.
“Chuck wants Hamilton back,” Schumer spokesman Angelo Roefaro told The Post.
Schumer was overheard on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon complaining about the move to Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), whose panel made the decision.
The Rules Committee’s top Republican, retiring Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, sponsored a bill instructing the Architect of the Capitol to put Truman’s statue in the Rotunda. But the legislation, which set in motion the statue switch, didn’t specifically require Hamilton’s removal.
One source told The Post that Schumer was heard telling Klobuchar — in apparent seriousness — that “you better put him back before the press finds out.”
A second source said Schumer made the remark to Klobuchar in jest after he learned at a bipartisan lunch about the abrupt demotion of the Founding Father.
At the lunch, Schumer “jokingly accused Blunt of being a descendant of Aaron Burr,” the second source said, referring to Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, who killed Hamilton in an 1804 duel.
Blunt’s office did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on the change, which left lower-profile figures like former Presidents James Garfield and Gerald Ford in the Capitol’s most iconic space.
Garfield, from Ohio, died after being shot during his first year as president. Ford, from Michigan, became president after Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 and lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. Both men had served in the House of Representatives.
A Klobuchar spokesperson told The Post that she “assured Sen. Schumer that we will find a good place for Alexander Hamilton, in ‘a room where it happens'” — a nod to the Broadway hit “Hamilton.”
But Klobuchar has shown no sign of reversing the Rules Committee decision out of deference to the Senate’s top Democrat.
“She has also noted that there are over 200 statues in the Capitol, but only 16 women represented, and we look forward to the installation of statues depicting [Supreme Court] Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O’Connor,” Klobuchar’s spokesperson said. “They will be installed because of a bill led by Sens. Klobuchar, [Susan] Collins, [Lisa] Murkowski and [Kyrsten] Sinema that passed by unanimous consent.”
