The Merchants Exchange
by Eric Nagy
Title
The Merchants Exchange
Artist
Eric Nagy
Medium
Photograph
Description
The Merchants Exchange (c1939 & today)
Walnut & Dock Streets
In 1831, a new group of wealthy notables representing the social and business aristocracy organized into a society for building an exchange. Included in the group of trustees for the new enterprise was Stephen Girard, arguably the wealthiest man in the nation. After the charter for the First Bank of the United States lapsed, Girard bought the building and established a bank named for himself in its quarters. Not surprisingly, then, the site chosen for the new Exchange was within eyesight of Girard's bank. The chosen architect of the Exchange, William Strickland, was the architect of the steeple on Independence Hall, the U.S. Naval Asylum and the U.S. Mint.
By the Civil War businesses had begun to move toward the western part of the city. The first Exchange was dissolved in favor of the Corn Exchange in 1866. By 1875 the Philadelphia Stock Exchange took the place of the Corn Exchange. In 1922 it was sold to a firm that made it a Produce Exchange. An open-air market surrounded the Exchange and vendors hawked vegetables from pushcarts. Photographs of the era show the magnificent building surrounded by rickety sheds and trucks. In 1952, the Independence National Historical Park bought the structure and maintains offices here to this day.
At the Exchange's dedication speech in 1832, Solicitor John Kane looked 150 years into the future and remarked, "the building which we have founded shall stand among the relics of antiquities, another memorial to posterity of the skill of its architect — and proof of the liberal spirit, and cultivated taste, which, in our days, distinguish the mercantile community." (ushistory.org)
Uploaded
November 4th, 2014
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