American Stock Exchange, New York



Architect
Starrett & van Vleck's
Date Built
1921
Location
86 Trinity Place, Lower Manhattan
Description
The building's Wikipedia page  explains that, "... New York's stock trading activity historically took place in outdoor spaces until 1792, when a predecessor to the NYSE was founded, and some trading moved into their building. Trading continued to take place "on the curb" outside the NYSE. The outside traders benefited from the NYSE's refusal to allow trade in some types of securities, and became a leading marketplace for non-listed securities. This market had no fixed location, moving around as traffic and other conditions dictated.  Starting in the 1880s, Emanuel S. Mendels and Carl H. Pforzheimer attempted to standardize the loosely organized curb market of curbstone brokers on Broad Street.   The New York Curb Market Agency was established in 1908 to codify trading practices. Three years later, the curbstone brokers had come to be known as the New York Curb Market, with a formal constitution and brokerage and listing standards. The Curb Market had offices in the Broad Exchange Building at Broad Street and Exchange Place, though trading remained outdoors."




"The Curb Market purchased a 26,000-square-foot .... L-shaped plot between Greenwich Street and Trinity Place in December 1919 for $1.6 million ..... The site had been the former location of a building occupied by the American Bank Note Company.   ....  Blueprints for the Curb Market structure were filed with the city government in November 1920. ... The building opened on June 27, 1921, at which point the New York Curb Exchange was the second largest in the U.S., behind the NYSE.  After moving indoors, the Curb Market grew to include a wide selection of issues, including "high-class industrial, public utilities, oils and domestic and foreign bonds" and within ten years, the Curb Market had 2,300 stocks on its list."


"By 1929, the Curb Market had outgrown the operations of the original building. That year, the Curb's building committee proposed adding eight office floors above the board room, as well as expanding the board room, thus extending the Curb Market building into the remaining undeveloped portion of its lot .... The Curb Exchange rehired Starrett & Van Vleck to build the annex. Plans were filed with the city government in January 1930, and construction of the annex started the next month ... The Curb Exchange was renamed the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) in 1953, and the exterior signage on Trinity Place was changed accordingly."

"NYSE acquired AMEX in January 2008, and AMEX sold off their building. On December 1 of that year, the American Stock Exchange Building was closed, and both the Amex Equities and Amex Options trading floors were moved to the NYSE Trading floor at 11 Wall Street. In 2011, the American Stock Exchange Building and the neighboring Western Electric building at 22 Thames Street were purchased by the partnership of Michael Steinhardt and Allan Fried at a cost of $65 million, a quarter of which was spent on the AMEX building. The partnership announced plans to renovate the Greenwich Street building into a retail structure with a hotel, and destroy 22 Thames Street, raising concerns from preservationists and neighborhood residents. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission subsequently designated the building as a city landmark in June 2012."

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