New York Stock Exchange Building

The New York Stock Exchange Building is the main office of the New York Stock Exchange, located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It has two connected parts.

The older part, at 18 Broad Street, was built between 1901 and 1903. The newer part, at 11 Wall Street, was added between 1920 and 1922.

The building at 18 Broad Street has a beautiful marble outside with columns facing east and west. Inside, there is a large room where people trade, and a smaller room called the Garage. There are also offices and meeting rooms in the upper levels of both buildings.

Over time, the New York Stock Exchange needed more space, so three more trading floors were added in the late 1900s. With the rise of online trading in the 2000s, those extra floors closed in 2007. The building became very important and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and a city landmark in 1985. It is also part of the Wall Street Historic District, which was created in 2007.

Site

The New York Stock Exchange Building is in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. It covers one whole block. The block is bounded by Broad Street to the east, Wall Street to the north, New Street to the west, and Exchange Place to the south. The area of the site is 31,350 square feet (2,913 m²).

After the September 11 attacks, safety steps were added around the building. These included a security zone and a pedestrian-only zone. Bollards were placed nearby to help keep the area safe. In 2017, plans were made to make the pedestrian zone better. They planned to add benches near the Fearless Girl statue and remove some subway entrances. This was approved in 2019.

Architecture

The New York Stock Exchange Building is where the New York Stock Exchange operates. It is the world's largest stock exchange. The building has two parts connected together. The older part at 18 Broad Street was designed by George B. Post and finished in 1903. The newer part at 11 Wall Street was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston and finished in 1922.

Facade

18 Broad Street

18 Broad Street is in the middle of the block. It has a facade made of white marble and is 156 feet tall. The side facing Broad Street looks like ancient Roman buildings.

The building has columns along Broad and New Streets. The windows above the columns are very large. There is a triangle-shaped design above the columns showing figures that represent trade and industry.

11 Wall Street

The building at 11 Wall Street is 22 stories tall and made of marble. It steps back from the edge at several heights. The main door is at the corner of Wall and New Streets.

Interior

The building has many technology and data systems. When first built, it had special tubes and phones to help people talk. There are many elevators and machines to keep everything running.

Basement

The building has four levels below ground. There is a very strong safe in the basement. The lowest level is 42 feet below ground and is protected by strong walls.

Trading floors

The main trading floor at 18 Broad Street covers 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²). It has tall columns and a high ceiling with lights. There are special bells that ring to start and end each trading day. There is another trading area at 11 Wall Street called "the Garage".

Upper stories

The sixth story has a big room with a high ceiling and decorated walls. The seventh story once had a club for members to eat, but it is now used for events. There are many offices and event spaces on the upper floors of both buildings.

History

Goods had been traded on Wall Street as early as 1725. Auctioneers helped people trade securities until 1792, when brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement to form an organization for securities trading, which later became the NYSE. In 1817, the organization changed its name to the New York Stock and Exchange Board. The brokers began renting space just for trading securities, using several locations for the next half-century, including the Tontine Coffee House. Ten years later, they moved into the Merchants' Exchange at 55 Wall Street. The growth in trading during the late 1800s showed how much the Stock and Exchange Board was growing.

Previous structure

In December 1865, the Stock and Exchange Board moved to 10 Broad Street, a T-shaped building between Wall Street and Exchange Place. The New York Stock Exchange Building Company owned the building, and the Exchange used a room on the second floor. The number of members grew when they added the Open Board of Stock Brokers in 1869. The Stock and Exchange Board bought all the company's stock in November 1870. They bought the lot at 12 Broad Street, and the two buildings were combined and expanded following designs by James Renwick Jr. The Stock Exchange Building reopened in September 1871. Even after expanding, the building was too small by 1885. The board room was expanded again in 1887. By the end of the 1890s, the building was crowded again.

Replacement

Planning and construction

The NYSE bought the plots at 16–18 Broad Street in late 1898 after two years of talking. The site cost more than $800,000. The NYSE planned to build a new building starting in 1903. They bought the Swan Building on 8 Broad Street in January 1899 for $425,000. The land cost $1.25 million in total. Eight architects were asked to design a new building. The main idea was that the trading floor needed to be an open space with few interruptions. The NYSE wanted a building with banking space on the ground floor or without it.

In December 1899, the NYSE approved George B. Post's design. A committee was formed to watch over building the new structure. Post kept changing his design for the next year. By July 1900, the NYSE agreed to move to the New York Produce Exchange at Bowling Green while the new NYSE Building was being built. Post filed plans for the building with the New York City Department of Buildings on April 19, 1901. Eight days later, traders stopped working at the old building. The cornerstone was laid on September 9, 1901. Over two thousand guests attended the building's dedication ceremony on April 22, 1903. The trading floor opened the next day. The New York Times reported, "When the gavel fell many brokers vied with each other for the honor of making the first business transaction."

Early years and annex

After the NYSE Building was finished, the exchange had trouble, including the Panic of 1907, when the NYSE dropped by almost fifty percent from the year before. When World War I started in Europe in 1914, many investors sold their securities for gold. Because of this, the NYSE trading floor closed for four months in 1914, the first time such a long closure happened. Trading wartime stocks increased business at the New York Curb Exchange outside the NYSE Building.

The Wall Street bombing happened outside the building on September 16, 1920.

In the first two decades, especially after World War I ended, the NYSE grew a lot. The rebuilt 18 Broad Street space quickly became too small. In December 1918, the NYSE bought the Mortimer Building next to its existing building, giving the exchange an extra space. The annex would give the building a full side on Wall Street. The Mortimer Building's demolition started in mid-1919. The NYSE also rented the Wilks Building northwest of its existing building in January 1920. Demolition of the Wilks Building began in June 1920.

Trowbridge and Livingston were hired to design an annex on the Mortimer and Wilks sites, while Marc Eidlitz and Son got the contract to build the annex. Plans for an annex at 11 Wall Street, rising twenty-two stories above a basement, were finished in February 1920. The NYSE would rent the first eight stories and the basement, including several stories for an expanded trading floor known as the "Garage", while the upper stories would be rented to office tenants. By August 1922, the annex was almost done. The annex's trading floor opened during the last week of December 1922. The New York Stock Exchange Safe Deposit Company started operating the vaults in the basement that year.

Later operations and expansions

1920s to 1940s

The office annex was not enough for the NYSE's long-term growth. In mid-1926, the exchange rented three floors at the nearby Commercial Cable Building on 20 Broad Street. In 1928, the NYSE bought not only the Commercial Cable Building but also the Blair Building, taking control of all the property on the city block.

The NYSE's growth stopped suddenly with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, when share prices on the exchange dropped 23 percent in two days, helping cause the Great Depression. The NYSE trading floor closed for over a week during the Depression, in March 1933. The marble sculptures of the pediment on Broad Street, which had gotten worse over the years, were replaced in 1936. At the end of the Great Depression, the NYSE grew again. Manufacturers Trust took over the basement vaults in 1942 when the NYSE Safe Deposit Company was dissolved. During World War II, women were allowed to trade in the building for the first time.

1950s to 1970s

By 1954, the NYSE was planning to replace the building at 20 Broad Street with a skyscraper. The exchange had the right to expand its trading floor to 20 Broad Street if needed. The building was finished in 1956. The NYSE used some floors at 20 Broad Street for exhibition space.

By the early 1960s, the NYSE needed to grow again and was thinking about moving out of its main building completely. The NYSE made several ideas for new headquarters, but none happened. The NYSE's leaders voted in 1967 to expand the trading floor into 20 Broad Street. The expansion, called the "Blue Room", opened in July 1969. It added space to the trading floor. Also, some computer facilities moved to Paramus, New Jersey, between 1967 and 1969.

The NYSE wanted to build a new headquarters along the East River, at the eastern end of Wall Street, in the long term. These plans were stopped in 1970 because of the recession of 1969–1970. In 1977, the media talked about rumors that the NYSE and the American Stock Exchange would merge and build a new combined building; however, the merger did not happen at that time. As a short-term fix, the NYSE updated its visitors' center in 1979, adding a gallery next to the main trading floor.

1980s and 1990s

Still needing more space, the NYSE rented some offices at 100 Broadway, one block away, in 1980. The NYSE wanted to grow its trading floor again and, in 1985, announced an expansion of the Blue Room at 20 Broad Street. This expansion was finished by 1988. Also, the original bell inside the main trading floor was replaced in the late 1980s.

The NYSE started looking for new places for its headquarters in mid-1996. Over the past five years, over a thousand companies had joined the exchange, and trading had more than doubled. The NYSE left the supercenter in 1993. The next year, NYSE leaders made a model trading floor for "3D trading", where securities were shown on electronic screens.

The NYSE started looking for new places for its headquarters again. The NYSE Building stayed a popular tourist spot, and the exchange built a visitor center at the building for $2 million in the late 1990s. The NYSE also offered tours of the building.

2000s to present

As a short-term fix, the NYSE looked into opening a trading floor at 30 Broad Street less than a block to the south in 1998. The expansion opened in late 2000. The same year, the NYSE and the city and state governments of New York agreed to buy the block to the east.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks caused only the third multi-day closing of the NYSE's trading floor in the building's history. After the attacks, the NYSE wanted to spread out its work, and the Lower Manhattan expansion was finally stopped in 2002.

Over the next few years, the rise in electronic trading made physical trading space less needed. The floor made up less than half of trades in 2007, down from 80 percent in 2004. Because of this, the 30 Broad Street trading floor closed in February 2007. The NYSE announced later that year that the Blue Room and Extended Blue Room at 20 Broad Street would close, leaving only the main floor and the Garage. The old space at 20 Broad Street became a home building in 2018. The NYSE Building's trading floor closed for two months in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, but electronic trading kept going. By the mid-2020s, The Wall Street Journal called the trading floor much quieter than in the 20th century. The Financial Times described the trading floor in 2021 as "largely a TV studio" and said that most trading was done electronically in New Jersey.

Impact

When the building at 18 Broad Street was finished, people liked its design. One writer said it looked like old Greek buildings but felt modern. Another architect called it a great design, especially the columns by the big windows.

The building became famous and important. Its columns are used in the New York Stock Exchange logo. Artists have made works near the building, like a famous bull statue and a statue of a fearless girl. The building was named a historic landmark in 1985 and is listed as an important place in the United States.

Main article: National Register of Historic Places Main articles: Wall Street Historic District, National Historic Landmark