 TheNew York Stock Exchange Building (right) at Broad and Wall Streets | |
| Native name | Heere Gracht (Dutch) |
|---|---|
| Part of | Financial District ofLower Manhattan |
| Coordinates | 40°42′18″N74°00′42″W / 40.7050°N 74.0116°W /40.7050; -74.0116 |
| Construction | |
| Completion | 1676 |
Broad Street is a north–south street in theFinancial District ofLower Manhattan inNew York City. Originally the Broad Canal inNew Amsterdam, it stretches from today'sSouth Street toWall Street.
The canal drew its water from theEast River,[1] and was infilled in 1676 after numerous fruit and vegetable vendors made it difficult for boats to enter the canal.[2] Early establishments on Broad Street in the 1600s included theFraunces Tavern[3] and theRoyal Exchange.[4] Later on the area became the center of financial activity, and all smaller buildings in turn were replaced with grand banks andstock exchange buildings. Most of the structures that stand today date from the turn of the 20th century, along with more modern buildings constructed after the 1950s.
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Broad Street, formerly calledHeere Gracht (canal of the lords in Dutch) in oldNew Amsterdam. Originally an inlet from theEast River, the canal was flanked by two solid ranks of three-story houses, with paths in front.[1] Built during the administration ofPeter Stuyvesant, the Broad Canal was the original Manhattan landing of the first ferry between Manhattan andBrooklyn, later theFulton Ferry.[5]
TheLovelace Tavern, in business from 1670 to 1706 and owned by the then-New York colonial governorColonel Francis Lovelace, occupied part of the current site of 85 Broad Street; however, the bar itself only had frontage on Pearl Street.[6][7][8][9] New YorkMayorStephanus van Cortlandt built his home in 1671 on Broad Street, on the future site ofFraunces Tavern.[3] Built as a one-story building in 1675,[citation needed] theRoyal Exchange (later known as the Old Royal Exchange and the Merchants Exchange) was a covered marketplace located near the foot of Broad Street close to its intersection withWater Street.[4] 30 Broad Street was once owned by theDutch church which had erected the city’s secondalmshouse on the site before 1659. Broad Street was originally acanal first known as "Common Ditch" then later "The Prince’s Ditch".[citation needed]
The canal was filled in 1676 because fruit and vegetable vendors, includingNative Americans who came by canoe fromLong Island, left the area littered, and fewer and fewer water craft were small enough to use the canal.[2] The paths in front of the rows of houses by the canal were paved in 1676 as well.[1] The road was first paved in 1693.[citation needed] The street saw a lot of change as the centuries progressed fromDutch toBritish rule and finally independent America. Among the tenants of Broad Street in the 18th century was booksellerGarrat Noel.[10]
The city's first firehouse for theNew York City Fire Department was built in 1736 in front of NYSE on Broad Street. Two years later, on December 16, 1737, the colony's General Assembly created the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York.[11]
The Broad Street building for theFraunces Tavern was bought in 1762 bySamuel Fraunces, who converted the home into the popular tavern first named the Queen's Head. Before theAmerican Revolution, the building was one of the meeting places of the secret society, theSons of Liberty. In 1768, theNew York Chamber of Commerce was founded by a meeting in the building.[12]
After a rebuilt in 1752 that added a meeting hall on the upper story, the Royal Exchange building was the location of the Chamber of Commerce in the City of New York (laterChamber of Commerce of the State of New York) from 1770 until theRevolutionary War. TheUnited States District Court for the District of New York was one of the original 13 courts established by theJudiciary Act of 1789, and it first sat at the Royal Exchange (Merchants Exchange) building on Broad Street.[13][14][15]
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The 1835Great Fire of New York destroyed whatever historical buildings were left from the early times of New Amsterdam/New York.[citation needed] Much of the street was destroyed again in theGreat New York City Fire of 1845. In the first two hours of the fire's spread, it reached a large multi-story warehouse occupied by Crocker & Warren on Broad Street, where a large quantity of combustiblesaltpeter was stored.[16][17] In July 1863,[18][19] theNew York Draft Riot in Manhattan became the largest civil insurrection inAmerican history apart from the Civil War.[20] Upon the outbreak of this riot,Jacob B. Warlow and his police unit contended with a mob on Broad Street,[19] with Warlow also helping quell other riots throughout the city from his station house on Broad Street.[21] As the area became the center of financial activity, all smaller buildings in turn were replaced with grand banks. Most of the structures that stand today date from the turn of the 20th century.[citation needed]
Acurb market ofcurbstone brokers became established on Broad Street in the mid-1800s,[22] growing in part out of theOpen Board of Brokers, previously in a building onNew Street[23] established in 1864.[24] The Open Board was located at 16 and 18 Broad Street[25] until 1869.[24] After the Open Board joined theConsolidated Exchange, Open Board members specializing in unlisted stocks were left without "a roof over their heads and took to meeting casually in the course of the day in convenient lobbies in the [financial] district".[23] In August 1865, a reporter described the curb market in front of the new exchange building on Broad Street. "There were at least a thousand people on the sidewalk and street... Buyer and seller, speculator and investor, operator and spectator, agent and principal, met face to face, upon the curb and beneath the sweltering sun, opened their mouths wide and screamed all manner of seeming nonsense at each other, while their hats tipped far toward the small of their backs, their eyes strained fiercely and their arms waved wildly above their heads, from which rolled rivers of profuse perspiration."[26] In 1877, a new organization theNew-York Open Board of Stock Brokers commissioned the same building at 16 and 18 Broad Street used by the old Open Board.[25]
TheMills Building was completed in 1882[27] as a 10-story structure that stood at 15 Broad Street andExchange Place,[27] with anL to 35Wall Street. It adjoined the building that was the home ofEquitable Trust Company. It also adjoined theJ. P. Morgan & Company Building on both Broad and Wall streets.[28] Thecurb brokers were ousted by a number of buildings as their numbers grew, until they ended up in front of theMills Building entrance on Broad Street.[23] The Mills building would be replaced by theEquitable Trust Building skyscraper in 1928.[29] TheStock Exchange Luncheon Club was a members-onlydining club of theNew York Stock Exchange (NYSE) founded on August 3, 1898 at 70 Broadway. It moved to theNew York Stock Exchange Building at 11 Wall Street in 1903.[30]
TheBroad Exchange Building at 25 Broad Street was built in 1900 to provide office space for financial companies includingPaine Webber.[31] At the time of its completion it was the largest office building in Manhattan.[32] In 1903, NYSE moved into new quarters at 18 Broad Street, between the corners of Wall Street andExchange Place.[33]
In the mining boom of 1905 and 1906, the Curb market on Broad Street attracted some negative publicity for the "wholesale use of the Curb for swindling".[34] As of 1907, the curb brokers intentionally avoided organizing.[23] The curb brokers had been kicked out of the Mills Building front by 1907, and had moved to the pavement outside theBlair Building where cabbies lined up. There they were given a "little domain of asphalt" fenced off by the police on Broad Street between Exchange Place and Beaver Street, after Police Commissioner McAddo took office.[23] As of 1907, the curb market operated starting at 10'clock in the morning, each day except on Sundays, until a gong at 3 o'clock. Orders for the purchase and sale of securities were shouted down from the windows of nearby brokerages, with the execution of the sale then shouted back up to the brokerage.[23] The noise caused by the curb market led to a number of attempts to shut it down.[35] In August 1907, for example, a Wall Street lawyer sent an open letter to the newspapers and the police commissioner, begging for the New York Curb Market on Broad Street to be immediately abolished as a public nuisance. He argued the curb exchange served "no legitimate or beneficial purpose" and was a "gambling institution, pure and simple". He further cited laws relating to street use, arguing blocking the thoroughfare was illegal. TheNew York Times, reporting on the open letter, wrote that brokers informed of the letter "were not inclined to worry". The article described "their present ground on the broad asphalt in front of 40 Broad Street, south of the Exchange Place, is the first haven of which they have had anything like indisputed possession."[23]
In 1908, theNew York Curb Market Agency was established, which developed appropriate trading rules for curbstone brokers[36] under "curb agent"E. S. Mendels.[37] In 1910, Mendels testified before the Wall Street Investigating Committee on behalf of the curb brokers, when an attempt was made to dislodge them from Broad Street.[38] In 1908, 70 Broad Street, between Marketfield and Beaver Street, became theAmerican Bank Note Company Building, the headquarters of theAmerican Bank Note Company.[39] Built in 1913,[40]23 Wall Street or "The Corner", is an office building formerly owned byJ.P. Morgan & Co. – later theMorgan Guaranty Trust Company – located at the southeast corner of Wall Street and Broad Street. So well known as the "House of Morgan" – that it was deemed unnecessary to mark the exterior with the Morgan name.[41]
In 1920, journalist Edwin C. Hill wrote that the curb exchange on lower Broad Street was a "roaring, swirling whirlpool" that "tears control of a gold-mine from an unlucky operator, then pauses to auction a puppy-dog. It is like nothing else under the astonishing sky that is its only roof." After a group of curb brokers formed a real estate company to design a building,Starrett & Van Vleck designed thenew exchange building onGreenwich Street inLower Manhattan between Thames and Rector, at 86 Trinity Place. It opened in 1921,[35] and the curbstone brokers moved indoors on June 27, 1921.[42][43]
When the high-profile New York firmEdward M. Fuller & Company went bankrupt in 1922, it had offices at 50 Broad Street.[44] Next to the New York Stock Exchange,[45] in 1929, a new 50-storyContinental Bank Building was announced at 30 Broad Street (location of the former 15-story Johnston Building) to house theContinental Bank and Trust Company and various brokers.[45][46] The building opened for occupancy on April 27, 1932.[47]
The now-famous sculptureCharging Bull was installed[48] on December 15, 1989 beneath a 60-foot (18 m)Christmas tree in the middle of Broad Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange as a Christmas gift to New Yorkers.[49] After NYSE officials called police,[49] it was later reinstalled two blocks south of the Exchange, inBowling Green.[50]
In 2011, theNew York City Opera moved its offices to 75 Broad Street inLower Manhattan.[51][52] Some re-shooting for the filmMoney Monster took place in mid-January 2016 in New York City onWilliam Street and Broad Street.[53] On December 10, 2018 was installed in front of the NYSE building the sculptureFearless Girl.[54]
North of Wall Street, Broad Street continues ontoNassau Street. The two southernmost skyscrapers in Manhattan are1 New York Plaza, on the west side of Broad Street, and125 Broad Street, on the east. The famous neo-Roman facade of theNew York Stock Exchange Building and its main entrance is located on 18 Broad Street. Opposite it is the former J.P. Morgan headquarters at23 Wall Street and15 Broad Street, the latter of which has been converted into a luxurycondominium.
Other buildings of note are theBroad Exchange Building at number 25, theContinental Bank Building at number 30, theLee, Higginson & Company Bank Building at number 37, and theAmerican Bank Note Company Building at number 70.
From north to south, notable buildings include:
Notable former buildings have included:
TheBroad Street station (J and Z trains) of theNew York City Subway is located at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets.[55]
The downtownM15,M20 andM55buses all run on Broad Street south of Water Street (uptown buses use Whitehall Street). TheM15 SBS crosses on Water Street in both directions.
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