(Robert Simonson’s article appeared on Playbill.com, 7/4; via Pam Green.)
Hamilton has altered the fate of a lot of other things beside Broadway.
Every now and then a show comes along that has an impact on society that no one—not the creators, not the producers, not the critics—could have anticipated. Hamilton is such a show. In this particular respect, it is, perhaps, the show to beat all shows. A very small percentage of the population have actually seen the show, but the nation has felt its influence in all sort of unexpected, unusual and, at times, absurd ways. Here is a tally of the most crazy and creative ways Hamilton has infiltrated every avenue of contemporary American existence.
The $10 Founding Father Saves the $10 Bill. How many stage shows have changed the course of American currency? Answer: one. The Treasury Department was all prepared to bump Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill, where the nation’s first Treasury secretary has had a home since 1929. In his place was to be the portrait of a famous American woman to be named later. And then Hamilton came along, and made the man on the sawbuck more famous and popular than he had been in a century. In 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew walked back on that decision, assuring the world that Hamilton would remain on on the $10. Instead, Andrew Jackson got the shove, losing the $20 to Harriet Tubman
http://www.playbill.com/article/the-hamilton-effect-8-ripple-effects-of-the-smash-musical