Finance History | Citibank — The Double Colonnade at 55 Wall Street
· 1908-12
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Finance History | Citibank — The Double Colonnade at 55 Wall Street
kevin
People treat Citibank as a Park Avenue holding company that arrived already named Citi.
The marble hall that made National City Bank visible on Wall Street is this building.
City Bank of New York was chartered by the state on 16 June 1812, two days before the United States declared war on Britain. Samuel Osgood, first Postmaster General of the federal government, was elected president. The bank opened on 14 September 1812 in a small house later numbered 52 Wall Street, with authorized capital of US$2 million in 1812 dollars and paid-in capital of US$800,000.
The first ledger entry was a deposit of US$100. The bank became The National City Bank of New York under the National Banking Act in 1865.
By the 1890s the house at 52 Wall was too small. James Stillman arranged the purchase of the Merchants' Exchange across the street, at 55 Wall, for US$3.265 million in 1899 dollars. Isaiah Rogers had raised the Greek Revival exchange after the Fire of 1835. The United States Custom House sat in it from 1862 until 1907.
McKim, Mead & White stripped the old dome, stacked a second colonnade, and opened a cruciform banking hall with a sixty-foot vault. On 19 December 1908 messengers carried the bank's holdings across Wall Street in leather satchels. Period accounts put the move at about US$500 million in 1908 dollars.
That hall was the mechanism. A merchant bank that had started as a credit club for its own directors now occupied the largest banking room in the country and used the granite to signal that New York deposits could clear the world.
National City stayed here until 1961. Citibank sold the building in 1992. The exterior was landmarked in 1965, the interior in 1999. The hall is now an event room. The upper floors are condominiums.
The pin is the public colonnade on Wall Street between William and Hanover. The 1812 house at 52 Wall is gone.
Photo: the National City Bank Building at 55 Wall Street, via Wikimedia Commons.
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