On September 16, 1920, an explosion took place by 23 Wall Street- the J.P. Morgan & Co. Building- killing thirty-eight and injuring about 400 people. The bombing was never solved and the blast marks were never repaired. The building was (and is) across the street from Federal Hall, the New York Stock Exchange, down the block from Trinity Church and a block south of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York-and near many other places of interest in history packed lower Manhattan.
The 72 story 927-foot-tall combination Art Deco and neo-Gothic skyscraper was the tallest building in the world when built in 1930–for about a month until the Chrysler Building was finished. Originally named the Manhattan Company Building, it was purchased by The Trump Organization in 1995 and became the Trump Building, a combination office and residential building.
In 1946, like the Empire State Building the previous year, due to fog, it was hit by a military plane. The last building in NYC accidentally hit by a plane until 2006.
Next door at 48 Wall Street is this corner stone of Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of New York laid in 1797.
The 40 Wall Street Building was previously the site of the headquarters of the Manhattan Company, established 1799, (eventually merged with Chase Manhattan Bank) which provided clean water and also engaged in some banking activities (talk about multi-tasking), thus competing with Hamilton’s monopolistic Bank of New York (the oldest bank in the US, founded 1784 & moved to this location in 1797).
The founder of the Manhattan Company was none other than …that’s right–Aaron Burr. This banking rivalry of course contributed to the Hamilton-Burr “Great Feud”.
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67-story, 952-feet tall built in 1932, it was the headquarters for the Cities Services (oil) Company and was the last skyscraper built in Lower Manhattan prior to World War II. At the time it was the 3rd largest building in the world. It has since been converted to a residential building.
A miniature model of the building itself over the entrance.
2002
2003
2005
Why did the local branch of the nation’s central bank place an armed guard at its entrance in 2003? Was it the threat of terrorism? Or maybe, because the Fed keeps about 6,000 tons of gold in the basement, it was a concern for bank robbers. Or perhaps it was the fear of what would be the Federal Reserve System’s most dangerous menace of all–independent auditors.
