Finance History | 2 Wall Street — Thirteen Desks After Glass-Steagall

People treat Morgan Stanley as a Broadway tower that always ran both a wealth desk and an underwriting book.

The first office was a room of roll-top desks looking onto Trinity Church.

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 forced J.P. Morgan and Co. to choose commercial banking or securities. The firm kept the deposit book.

On 5 September 1935, in the partners' room at 23 Wall Street, Thomas Lamont read a statement: a group of partners and staff from J.P. Morgan and from Drexel and Co. in Philadelphia were withdrawing to found Morgan Stanley and Co. Inc.

Henry S. Morgan, grandson of J. Pierpont Morgan, and Harold Stanley opened the new house on 16 September 1935 at 2 Wall Street, a few doors west of The Corner.

The firm launched with a staff of thirteen and $6.6 million of nonvoting preferred stock subscribed by J.P. Morgan partners. About two hundred vases of flowers arrived on the first day.

One week later the house led a $19 million offering for Consumers Power Company. In the first three and a half months the partners raised $200 million for clients. By the end of 1936 they had underwritten more than $1 billion of new issues, about a quarter of the market.

The building at 2 Wall Street, completed in 1933 for the First National Bank, still stands at Wall and Broadway.

The securities book that Glass-Steagall cut off the Morgan partnership started again in that room.

Photo: National City Bank Building at 55 Wall Street stands a block east of the 1935 office; Beyond My Ken, via Wikimedia Commons.