Postcard Thursday: The Buttonwood Agreement

On May 17, 1792 (226 years ago today), the New York Stock Exchange was founded by a group of twenty four individuals and firms under a buttonwood tree near 68 Wall Street (just west of Pearl Street).

The short document read:

We the Subscribers, Brokers for the Purchase and Sale of the Public Stock, do hereby solemnly promise and pledge ourselves to each other, that we will not buy or sell from this day for any person whatsoever, any kind of Public Stock, at a less rate than one quarter percent Commission on the Specie value and that we will give preference to each other in our Negotiations. In Testimony whereof we have set our hands this 17th day of May at New York, 1792.

Among those who were members of that original exchange were Leonard Bleecker, whose brother Anthony was namesake of Bleecker Street, Isaac M. Gomez, whose father's home in Marlboro, New York, built ca. 1714, is the oldest Jewish home in America, Benjamin Seixas, a president of Congregation Shearith Israel and former privateer, and Samuel Beebe, in whose offices in 1817, the stock exchange would be reorganized and receive the name "New York Stock and Exchange Board."



The exchange may have actually met under the tree in good weather, but in the early years they mostly convened inside the Tontine Coffee House (above, with the balcony) on Wall Street near the corner of Water Street. Later, they rented an office on the second floor of the Bank of New York for $200 a year (which included heat) before moving into the Merchant's Exchange at 55 Wall Street and, finally, two successive buildings on the current spot on Broad Street. Today, a scraggly buttonwood stands in front of the exchange to mark this event.

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Read more about NYC history in

 

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: The Great Fire of 1835

The image in today's postcard (which is actually a commemorative print) depicts an event that took place over three days, December 16-18, 1835. So, technically, Postcard Thursday isn't one day late.

This year marks the 180th anniversary of the Great Fire of 1835, the most devastating fire in the Western Hemisphere since London's near-total destruction in 1666.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

On the night of December 16, 1835, a gas line broke in a dry goods store near Hanover Square in the Financial District; the gas, ignited by a coal stove, caused the store to explode and the ensuing fire quickly fanned southward along Stone Street and northeast toward Wall Street. Not only was it the worst fire in New York’s history, it wiped away almost all of the remaining traces of the old Dutch and British colonial city. 

New York had some of the nation’s strictest fire codes; buildings were never erected with common walls, and brick and stone were favored over cheaper wood (though this was as much about status as safety). Every home was required to have a leather fire bucket affixed to a hook by the door and every business had to have at least two. At the sound of the first alarm, the city’s volunteer fire companies turned out in force. As per instructions, every fire bucket was made ready, and bucket brigades formed to nearby wells and cisterns. Unfortunately, it had been so cold for so many nights that the wells were frozen solid. 

When the firefighters changed tack and headed for the East River instead, they found to their chagrin that the river was frozen, too. With no other source of running water, they were forced to improvise. At the ends of the piers, holes were hacked in the ice and fire engines lowered down to pump water. However, by the time they were able to get any water flowing, the hoses had frozen, and when they did manage to get water up, most of it was blown back as frozen ice into the faces of the firemen. In some places, the only way to stop the fire’s spread was to blow up buildings in its path to create a makeshift firebreak.

Mayor Philip Hone, one of the great diarists of New York in the 19th century, wrote:

“December 17—How shall I record the events of last night, or how attempt to describe the most awful calamity which has ever visited these United States? The greatest loss by fire that has ever been known…. I am fatigued in body, disturbed in mind, and my fancy filled with images of horror which my pen is inadequate to describe.”

In the end, the fire had to burn itself out and, in the process, it destroyed much of the area between Broadway and Pearl Street in the financial district. If you happen to be down in that neighborhood, take a walk down the block of Stone Street that connects Hanover Square to Coenties Slip. This is the area known today for its string of restaurants and pubs; the buildings themselves, however, form a sort of memorial to the fire. Almost all of them were built within a 12-month period in 1836-37 to replace countinghouses and warehouses destroyed in the Great Fire. Notice how many of the buildings have extra wide doors (to haul in cargo) and strong, granite curbs to keep goods from accidentally plunging in to the basement.

courtesy of the New York Public Library

There are supposedly no other, official memorials to the Great Fire, despite the fact that it was the largest urban fire since London’s Great Fire in 1661. But when we were writing Inside the Apple, we found one. During the worst of the fire,

a valiant attempt was made to rescue a 15-foot statue of Alexander Hamilton from the floor of the exchange, but just as the statue reached the doorway the roof collapsed, destroying it. The statue, by Robert Ball Hughes, was the first marble statue created in the United States and had only been installed eight months earlier. Though it took 45 years, the statue was ultimately replaced by Hamilton’s youngest son, John C. Hamilton, and it stands in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This statue in the park is remarkable in that it is made entirely of granite—not the easiest stone to carve—and it has long been thought that John C. Hamilton commissioned the work out of this durable stone so that no matter what calamities might befall Central Park, his father’s statue would endure.

courtesy of the Central Park Conservancy

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Read more about NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Available from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or from independent bookstores across the country. 

Postcard Thursday: The Crash of '29

October 29, 1929, was "Black Tuesday," the culmination of events that led the stock market to crash and plunge the United States—and the world—into the Great Depression.

From Inside the Apple:

The New York Stock Exchange, which had surged throughout the 1920s to a new high, lost close to 18% of its value in September 1929, but this had not been enough to truly shake investors’ confidence. Financial prognosticator Irving Fisher, who believed the market was still on its way up, shrugged off the market’s volatility as simply its way of “shaking out of the lunatic fringe.” The first sign of trouble came on Thursday, October 24—later called “Black Thursday”—when 12.9 million shares traded hands. (A normal trading day in the 1920s saw about 3 million shares traded.) The stock ticker, unable to keep up with the volume, fell 90 minutes behind and panic set in. 

A group of bankers hurriedly assembled at Morgan’s Bank and pooled $130 million to bail out the market (in a move similar to Morgan’s intervention during the Panic of 1907. The market settled down when Stock Exchange Vice President Richard Whitney strode onto the trading floor in the afternoon and placed an order for 10,000 shares of U.S. Steel. He proceeded to use the $130 million to prop up other stocks and the market closed on a note of confidence. Trading was mixed over the next two days (there was still Saturday morning trading in those days), allaying some fears, but on Monday the slide began. Nervous investors began selling at the start of the trading day and by the close, the market had lost 13% of its value—[at the time] the worst one-day decline in the market’s history....

On “Black Tuesday” the bottom fell out. A record 16.4 million shares traded that day and the market declined an additional 12%—the total losses for the week surpassed the annual federal budget. No pool of investors stepped in to prop up the market this time. By the end of the day, the “Roaring Twenties” were over and though the country wouldn’t realize it yet, it had been plunged into the worst economic downturn in its history, the Great Depression.

The stock market would continue to fall until November 13 when it hit a “false” bottom. General Electric, which had been trading at 396-1/4 in September, was now trading at 168-1/8. However, despite a temporary recovery over the next few months, the market soon began to decline again and by the time it hit its real bottom in 1932, G.E. was trading at just 8-1/2, a staggering loss of 98% of its value. It would take the Dow Jones Industrial Average 22 years to climb back to its September 1929 levels.

Today's postcard dates to sometime around 1910 and shows the facade of the New York Stock Exchange. Notice the building originally had a set of uneven steps up to the trading floor, which were subsequently removed.

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Read more about NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Available from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or from independent bookstores across the country. 

George B. Post (1837-1913)

Today marks the 173rd birthday of George B. Post, one of New York's most influential Beaux-Arts architects.

Post was born in New York City on December 15, 1837, and graduated from the University of the City of New York--today called NYU--in 1858 with a degree in Civil Engineering. Post immediately apprenticed to Richard Morris Hunt, who had recently returned from Paris with a degree from L'ecole des Beaux Arts. Post worked with Hunt at his Tenth Street Studio in Greenwich Village for a few years; however, as soon as the Civil War broke out, Post volunteered and became a captain of New York's 22nd Regiment. The company saw action not only at the front, but also during the quelling of the New York City Draft Riot in 1863.

In the post-war era, Post went on to rival his former teacher in terms of influence. Alas, many of his great New York buildings are now gone, including  the Produce Exchange, the Cotton Exchange, and Joseph Pulitzer's World building, the first skyscraper to call itself the tallest building in the world. But what remains of Post's work is spectacular, including the New York Stock Exchange (1903), the Harlem campus of City College (1907), the Brooklyn Historical Society (1881), and the original Williamsburg Savings Bank (1875) at 175 Broadway in Williamsburg. Post was President of the Architectural League, the American Institute of Architects, the Fine Arts Federation of New York, and the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, where he oversaw the construction of the studio building for artists who were club members.

(Post also worked in other cities, most notably at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where he built the Manufacturers and Arts Building, and as the architect of Wisconsin's Capitol in 1906.)

If you work or live near one of Post's buildings, take a moment today to stop and admire his handiwork. Happy Birthday, George!

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Read more about the New York Stock Exchange,
City College, and other Post buildings in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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The New York Stock Exchange turns 218 Years Old

On May 17, 1792 -- 218 years ago today -- the New York Stock Exchange was founded with the signing of the Buttonwood Agreement.

The agreement launched the New York Stock and Exchange Board (the precursor to today's NYSE) and was signed by 24 members who met underneath the buttonwood tree outside 68 Wall Street. As we write in Inside the Apple:

"The first rule [in the agreement] was that they would only trade with each other. The second rule simply stated that they would hold commissions to 'one quarter of one percent.'"

After a succession of homes, the NYSE now sits at the corner of Broad and Wall in an imposing 1903 structure by George B. Post. But a tiny forlorn tree stands in front of the new building (now safely behind the fence) as a remembrance of the exchange's humble beginnings.

New York Stock Exchange Reaches an All-Time Low

Today, the number of shares traded daily at the New York Stock Exchange numbers in the billions. But 180 years ago today – on March 16, 1830 – only thirty-one shares changed hands in both the morning and afternoon sessions, an all-time low. A typical day in the 1830s saw well over 1,000 shares traded and by 1835 daily volume would reach 8,500 shares.

In 1830, the exchange was located in rented quarters at 40 Wall Street. Five years later that building – along with most of Wall Street – would be engulfed by the Great Fire of 1835, a huge conflagration that destroyed 600  buildings downtown.

After moving a couple of times in the 19th century, the exchange finally settled on Broad Street; its current home, designed by George B. Post, opened in 1903.

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Read more about the New York Stock Exchange
in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Charging Bull turns 20

If you worked on Wall Street twenty years ago, you would have showed up to work the morning of December 16th to find a surprise: Arturo DiModica's massive Charging Bull statue nestled underneath the Stock Exchange's massive Christmas tree.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

The 7,000-pound statue was finished in late 1989. Having scoped out Wall Street to discover when the night guards at the New York Stock Exchange would be scarce, DiModica pulled onto the street in a flatbed truck on the evening of December 15, 1989, lowered the bull into place, and took off, leaving behind a sheaf of flyers telling people about his gift. To DiModica’s surprise, a Christmas tree had been put up in front of the Exchange since he’d done his reconnaissance, and so he was able to tuck the bull underneath the tree as a Christmas present. The flyer announced that the work attested “to the vitality, energy and life of the American people in adversity” and that it was “offered honorably”—and free—”in acknowledgment of American dynamics.” *

The statue lasted a day in front of the exchange before Dick Grasso had it hauled away--presumably to be melted down for scrap. It was rescued by Parks Commissioner Henry Stern who unveiled it in its new "temporary" home in Bowling Green Park on December 21st, where it has remained ever since.

It seems that for its first few years in Bowling Green, the statue was paid little notice--it appears rarely in the press or guidebooks from the early 1990s. Today it is one of the most visited--and photographed--spots in Lower Manhattan. Just don't try publishing those photos without DiModica's permission: it may be in a city park, but DiModica owns the statue and the copyright on its image. Just ask the folks at Random House.

* Thanks to Inside the Apple friend Matthew Henry
for sharing DiModica's flyer with us.

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Read more about Charging Bull in
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

>>> It makes a great Holiday Present! <<<

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