Finance History | 65 Broadway — American Express Rebuilt Its Own Block

People treat American Express as a Midtown card company that later found a tower at the World Trade Center site.

For a century the firm was a Broadway address.

American Express had occupied this midblock lot, running through to Trinity Place, since 1874.

It bought the land in 1903.

By 1916 the five-story brownstones on the site were too small and too old to alter.

James L. Aspinwall of Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker designed a 21-story neoclassical office in white brick and terra cotta over a granite base.

The plan was an H, with light courts, so the inner rooms still got daylight.

The New York Times called it the most important downtown building job then underway.

The new house was essentially finished in April 1917.

American Express kept most of the floors and leased the top six.

From this building the firm ran foreign express, travel paper, and, much later, the charge card it launched in 1958.

It left the tower in 1974 for 2 New York Plaza, sold the property the next year, and kept a ground-floor public office for a time.

The facade became a New York City landmark in 1995.

The company that occupies the S&P 500 today is the descendant of the express partnership Wells, Fargo and Butterfield formed in 1850.

The name on the lintel changed.

The Broadway elevation did not.

Photo: Irving Underhill, 1917, public domain, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons.