Tag: Alexander Hamilton

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PODCAST: New York Stock Exchange

We steal this week’s topic straight for today’s headlines! We look at the early days of New York finance and the creation of the New York Stock Exchange, beginning with Alexander Hamilton, some pushy auctioneers, a coffee house and a sycamore tree.

And find how this seminal financial institution ended up in its latest home — that beautiful, classically designed George Post building, with a marble goddess on top who was almost too heavy for her own good.

Listen to it for free on iTunes or other podcasting services. Or you can download or listen to it HERE

The streets and ports of New York in 1790s, setting for America’s first financial crisis and the birth of the New York stock trading system. At the far left is the Tontine Coffee House.

This slight little man is William Duer, former assistant secretary of the treasury, whose shiftless manipulation of the early American financial system got him thrown in debtors prison for life

An illustration of the Buttonwood Agreement, which formed the loose collection of brokers who would form the New York Stock Exchange

The Tontine Coffee House (that building with the balcony) where the stock market meets a good coffee bean

A sketch of Wall Street in the mid 19th century. (You can see Trinity Church and a hint of Federal Hall to your left.) The Stock Exchange headquarters floated around from place to place during this period until an elegant Italian Renaissance style building was built for it in 1863

A kind of rough drawing to be sure, but this supposedly depicts the inside of the trading floor from the 1863 building. Sorry to say I couldn’t find any images of the outside, but the John Kellum designed building sounds like it was a beauty.

Another illustration of the new Exchange itself, taken from a membership note

George Post’s masterful Stock Exchange building, mustering up his finest Beaux-Arts instincts in ways that created a solid, powerful structure for an institution sometimes without such stability

Looking down Wall Street in 1911. By this time a “financial district” was firmly in place as bank offices, brokerage firms and other moneyed interests flock around the Stock Exchange. (This awesome picture is courtesy Shorpy, quite possibly my favorite website in the world.)

Looking down at the Stock Market as it was crashing in 1929.

Crowds outside the Stock Exchange, with George Washington looking down from the steps of Federal Hall

The trading floor from the 1950s

Crazed traders in 1963 (from photographer Thomas O’Halleran)

One of the most powerful street corners in the world

Due to the crush of monstrous buildings all around it, the Stock Exchange sits in a virtual canyon

All sorts of people have rang the opening bell at the Stock Exchange, including P Diddy….

…Emeril and Snoopy

Hamilton Grange: Movin’ on up!

Pic courtesy of Friends of St Nicolas Park

The Hamilton Grange National Monument is finally on the move! The home of Alexander Hamilton, built in 1802 and inhabited by the Founding Father for all of two years before his fateful duel with Aaron Burr, is being slowly lifted from its cramped, ingracious little spot next to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

As you can see from the website, the house had to actually be lifted over part of the church that had been built blocking the Grange front porch. Once at the proper height, the entire home was moved into Convent Avenue where it will slowly be lowered. On June 7th, it will be moved to its new digs at St. Nicolas Park, where it will be crowded by nothing but shrubs, picnic tables and trees.

What the Grange used to look like and where it was situated;

What the scene at the Grange was like a few months ago:

And here’s the graphic of what the new Hamilton Grange arrangement will finally look like, courtesy the National Park Service:

Obviously they will have to rebuild the side porches, the original entrance and other features that were stripped off when the house was moved next to St. Luke’s in 1889.

I highly recommend a trip up to the neighborhood of Hamilton Heights to check out this very unusual sight. You may not see a national monument hoisted up into the air for quite some time!

Categories
Podcasts

PODCAST: New York Post

Extra! Extra!
Scandal Sheet Revealed To Be Started By Founding Father!
New York Post May Be Responsible For Central Park!
Rupert Murdoch Property Was Once A Nest of Liberal Sympathizers!
PLUS: Was there really a “headless body” in a “topless bar”?

Listen to it for free on iTunes or other podcasting services. Or you can download or listen to it HERE

Murdoch, of course, didn’t exactly invent the New York Post’s penchant for attention-grabbing headlines. They’re just a lot better written:

Some recent favorites:

And the tasteless hilarity isn’t even relegated to merely the front page:

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New York City’s curious, modern-day Olympus

Most small community colleges feature a statue or two honoring somebody specifically related to the campus. Even massive schools could invite their monuments over for a small dinner and have room for you and your friend from out of town.

Bronx Community College would need a fairly large banquet hall. This school in University Heights, the Bronx, is a kooky mix of classical Stanford White-designed buildings (from the days when New York University camped here) to some rather awkward concrete classrooms typical of schools that flourished in the 1970s.

One of the stranger acquisitions BCC received when it took over the NYU campus in 1973 was a prestigious hall of fame featuring the biggest names in American history. Let me clarify. They don’t own a hall of fame. They have THE Hall of Fame.

Tucked on a scenic cliff overlooking the Harlem River (and with the Cloisters well in sight), the Hall of Fame for Great Americans was an ambitious project constructed in 1900 with the idea of immortalizing the Americans with significant contributions to science, the arts, politics and the military. Spearheaded by then-chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken, the project is the first real memorial ‘hall of fame’ concept to be executed in the United States.

The spacious colonnade tucked behind the White-designed Hall of Philosophy, you are thrown back into a mix of turn-of-the century scholarly aesthetic and the belief of equating the American movement with ancient Roman and Greek forefathers.

With room for 102 sizable busts (although there are only 98), the colonnade winds around the contours of the hill, spotlighting American icons. John Marshall sits astride Henry Clay. Harriet Beecher Stowe is a few busts down from brother Henry. George Washington AND George Washington Carver are close enough, they could play catch (if they had arms).

The Hall of Fame is a true curiosity in the ‘roadside attraction’ sense. Once a fabled hall with prestige enough that newspapers would lobby for nominees, there haven’t been any new inclusions since the 1960s. (Three more ‘American icons’ — Clara Barton, Andrew Carnegie and Luther Burbank — were elected in 1976, but nobody ever made busts for them!) Once NYU sold the campus, the colonnade was neglected, the hall of fame virtually forgotten.

It has been recently renovated, and the BCC keeps this well-preserved secret maintained. I went this weekend, stayed for about an hour, and didn’t see a soul. It’s worth a visit for the view, although you might want to wait until spring to appreciate the foliage.

Fun Hall of Fame trivia:

— One bust sits apart from the others, partially because he’s the only non-American — the Marquis de Lafayette

— The bust of Stephen Foster in inscribed with the music and lyrics to ‘Swanee River’

— Actor Edwin Booth sits serenely looking out at the river, while the man his younger brother assassinated, Abraham Lincoln, has a less interesting view

— Hey! We’ve actually done whole podcasts on four members of the Hall of Fame — Beecher, Washington Irving, Peter Cooper and Alexander Hamilton

— The bust of female astronomer Maria Mitchell creeps me out to my very soul

How to get there: #4 train to Burnside Avenue. Walk west to University Avenue and one block north to the college.