New York Stock Exchange Building

Overview

The New York Stock Exchange Building (also NYSE Building) is the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is composed of two connected structures occupying much of the city block bounded by Wall Street, Broad Street, New Street, and Exchange Place. The central section of the block contains the original structure at 18 Broad Street, designed in the Classical Revival style by George B. Post. The northern section contains a 23-story office annex at 11 Wall Street, designed by Trowbridge & Livingston in a similar style. The marble facade of 18 Broad Street contains colonnades facing east toward Broad Street and west toward New Street, both atop two-story podiums. The Broad Street colonnade, an icon of the NYSE, contains a pediment designed by John Quincy Adams Ward and Paul Wayland Bartlett, depicting commerce and industry. The facade of 11 Wall Street is simpler in design but contains architectural details similar to those at 18 Broad Street. Behind the colonnades at 18 Broad Street is the main trading floor, a 72-foot-tall (22 m) rectangular space. An additional trading floor, nicknamed the Garage, is at 11 Wall Street. There are offices and meeting rooms in the upper stories of 18 Broad Street and 11 Wall Street. The NYSE had occupied the site on Broad Street since 1865 but had to expand its previous building several times. The structure at 18 Broad Street was erected between 1901 and 1903. Within two decades, the NYSE's new building had become overcrowded, and the annex at 11 Wall Street was added between 1920 and 1922. Three additional trading floors were added in the late 20th century to accommodate increasing demand, and there were several proposals to move the NYSE elsewhere during that time. With the growing popularity of electronic trading in the 2000s, the three newer trading floors were closed in 2007. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1985. The building is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places district created in 2007.

Site

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Building is in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, occupying the city block between Broad Street to the east, Wall Street to the north, New Street to the west, and Exchange Place to the south. The lot has a total area of 31,350 square feet (2,913 m2). Nearby buildings include 1 Wall Street to the west; 14 Wall Street to the north; Federal Hall to the northeast; 23 Wall Street and 15 Broad Street to the east; Broad Exchange Building to the southeast; and 30 Broad Street to the south. The Broad Street station of the New York City Subway, served by the J and ​Z trains, originally contained two staircases that led to the sidewalk directly outside the New York Stock Exchange Building. One stair was closed in 2002, following the September 11 attacks, while the other was closed in 2012. A security zone created after the September 11 attacks surrounds the NYSE Building. In addition, a pedestrian-only zone was established along several blocks immediately surrounding the building. Bollards were installed at several intersections around the building in the mid-2000s. In 2017, community group Downtown Alliance proposed improvements to the pedestrian-only zone surrounding the NYSE Building. The plans included a series of benches placed around the Fearless Girl statue on the Broad Street side of the building. The improvements also included the removal of the Broad Street subway entrances, which was approved in 2019.

Architecture

The building houses the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies. It is at the same location as the NYSE's previous headquarters, which had dated to 1865. The NYSE Building is composed of two primary structures. The southern one, at 18 Broad Street in the center of the block, was designed by George B. Post in the Classical Revival style and completed in 1903, directly replacing the former headquarters. The northern structure, at 11 Wall Street on the northern end of the block, has a frontage directly on Wall Street; it was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston and completed in 1922. Due to the site's sloping topography, the first floor is at ground level at the corner of Wall and New Streets, but is one level above Broad Street.

18 Broad Street

18 Broad Street, the older structure in the modern building, is at the center of the block. The structure has a facade of white Georgia marble and a roof 156 feet (48 m) above sidewalk level. 18 Broad Street has a frontage of 152 feet 10 inches (47 m) on New Street and 137 feet 8.5 inches (41.974 m) on Broad Street. The facade on Broad Street is inspired by ancient Roman sources, and writer Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis compared the facade to that of the Maison Carrée in southern France. The original structure contains colonnades along both Broad and New Streets. Unlike the Roman sources from which the design of 18 Broad Street's facade is derived, the building has entrances at basement level on both sides, rather than grand staircases leading to the colonnades. On Broad Street is a two-story podium made of granite blocks. It is divided vertically into seven bays of doorways at the basement, which on Broad Street is at ground level. There are arched windows with balconies on the first story. A decorative lintel tops each of the basement openings, while brackets support each short balcony. South of the podium is a two-bay-wide extension with a double-height arch at basement level, providing access to the offices near the trading floor. On New Street, rusticated marble blocks clad the basement and first stories, and the openings are simpler in design compared to the Broad Street facade.

Above the podiums on Broad and New Streets, the colonnades span the second through fifth stories. Both colonnades consist of two flat pilasters flanking six columns; each of the columns is 5.5 feet (1.7 m) in diameter and 52 feet (16 m) tall. The columns on Broad Street are fluted, while those on New Street are not. There are wrought-iron railings between each column. The colonnade on Broad Street supports an entablature with the words "New York Stock Exchange" in capital letters. Behind the colonnades are massive windows, each measuring about 96 feet (29 m) wide by 50 feet (15 m) tall. Each window has vertical iron mullions that can support its weight and resist wind pressure on each of them. The windows were originally double-glazed for insulation, and Post also designed movable vertical shades for the windows. The two southernmost bays on Broad Street, outside the colonnade, contain pairs of windows on each of the second through eighth stories. Above the colonnade on Broad Street is a triangular pediment, originally carved by the Piccirilli Brothers and designed by John Quincy Adams Ward and Paul Wayland Bartlett. The pediment measures about 100 feet (30 m) above the sidewalk and about 110 feet (34 m) wide. It is composed of eleven figures representing commerce and industry. The central figure is a female representation of integrity, flanked by four pairs of figures depicting planning/building, exploring/mining, science/industry, and agriculture. Two small children, also described as putti, sit at Integrity's feet. The figures were originally fashioned in marble from 1908 to 1909; they were replaced in 1936 with sheet metal carvings coated with lead. A cornice with egg-and-dart moldings and lions' head carvings runs atop the Broad Street facade. A parapet with a balustrade runs above the cornice on Broad Street. The New Street facade has a simple cornice.

11 Wall Street

The northern annex at 11 Wall Street is 22 stories tall, or 23, including the ground-level basement on Broad Street, and is constructed of Georgia marble. It occupies an irregular lot extending 58 feet (18 m) on Broad Street, 156 feet (48 m) on Wall Street, and 100 feet (30 m) on New Street. 11 Wall Street has an overall height of 258 feet (79 m). The building's massing, or general form, incorporates setbacks at the ninth, nineteenth, and twentieth stories, as well as a roof above the twenty-second story. A heavy cornice runs above the eighteenth story.

The annex's main entrance is a chamfered corner at Wall and New Streets. It consists of a rectangular doorway with Doric columns on each side, above which are a transom, entablature, and balustrade. The windows on 11 Wall Street are largely paired rectangular sash windows. The annex contains design elements that visually connect it to the older building. On Broad Street, a belt course above the first story, two floors above street level, connects with the top of the podium on 18 Broad Street. The balustrade at the ninth story, ten floors above street level, connects with those atop 18 Broad Street. Additionally, on the Wall Street facade, there is a small row of Corinthian pilasters flanking the second- through fifth-story windows. These pilasters are similar in design to the colonnades of 18 Broad Street.

Interior

The exchange is the locus for a large amount of technology and data. When the building was first completed, pneumatic tubes and telephones were installed on the trading floor and other parts of the building to facilitate communications. Some 25,000 feet (7,600 m) of pipes were used to heat and cool the offices. Four boilers generated a combined 800 horsepower (600 kW) of steam, while three power generators were capable of a combined 1,040 horsepower (780 kW). In addition, numerous elevators were constructed in the building's constituent structures. Six passenger elevators, three lifts, and five dumbwaiters were provided at 18 Broad Street. Eleven elevators were installed at 11 Wall Street. A 2001 article noted that the trading floor required 3,500 kilowatts (4,700 hp) of electricity, 8,000 phone circuits on the trading floor alone, and 200 miles (320 km) of fiber-optic cables below ground.

Basement

There are four basement levels. The machinery, electric and steam plants, maintenance workers' rooms, and vaults are in the basement and subbasement underneath the first-story trading floor. The building was constructed with a steel safe deposit vault measuring about 118.58 feet (36 m) wide, 21 feet (6 m) long, and 9 feet 10 inches (3 m) high, weighing 776 short tons (693 long tons; 704 t) when empty. A basement corridor led to the Wall Street station of the city's first subway line (now the 4 and ​5 trains), under Broadway. The lowest basement level is 42 feet (13 m) below Wall Street. The basement is surrounded by a concrete cofferdam resting on solid rock. The surrounding area had an atypically high water table, with groundwater being present a few feet below ground, partially because Broad Street was the former site of a drainage ditch. As a result, caissons were used to excavate part of the 18 Broad Street site, and a concrete cofferdam was built around it. The remainder of the basement and subbasements were then excavated. The caissons were built of wood and measured 30 by 8 by 50 feet (9 m × 2 m × 15 m) each.

Trading floors

The main trading floor (formerly the boardroom) on the first story at 18 Broad Street covers 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2). The room extends the width of the block between New and Broad Streets. The trading floor was laid out to maximize usable space and, as a result, had minimal space for visitors on the floor itself. There was originally a narrow gallery for smokers on the New Street side and an admission area for guests on Broad Street. The room's floor is at the same level as New and Wall Streets; as built, a marble double stair from the basement at Broad Street provided an entrance for members. The floor surface was originally covered with wood. Interrupting the main trading floor are eight iron columns, the placement of which was decided after twenty to thirty drawings. The lowest 20 feet (6.1 m) of the walls are clad in marble, with arched alcoves for access to other rooms. The marble panels contain bluish-brownstone centers and pink-marble metopes at the top. Four transverse trusses spanning the width of the room, measuring 115 feet (35 m) long and 15 feet (4.6 m) thick, support the ceiling. These trusses are carried on pairs of pilasters at each end and subdivide the ceiling into coffers. The center of the ceiling is fitted with a 30-by-30-foot (9.1 by 9.1 m) skylight, while the rest of the ceiling was gilded upon the building's completion. As constructed, there were 500 telephones in the room, as well as annunciators clustered around the New Street end and surrounding the large columns on the floor. The northern and southern walls originally had colored "checkerboards" with over 1,200 panels, which could be lit in a variety of patterns to flash messages to members on the floor. Each of the four primary trading areas contain the NYSE's opening and closing bells (originally just one bell), which are rung to mark the beginning and the end of each trading day. Abutting the trading floor on higher levels were doctors' rooms, baths, and barbershops for NYSE members, in addition to call bells that could be rung whenever someone needed a broker to come down. A passageway leads north to the other trading floors at 11 Wall Street; another passage once led south to 20 Broad Street. By 2000, there were 17 trading posts on the trading floor, each with multiple electronic screens, where securities were traded by a specialist. There is another trading floor at the northeast section of 11 Wall Street, nicknamed "the Garage". This floor is 106 feet (32 m) long and 50–80 feet (15–24 m) wide, while the ceiling is 43 feet (13 m) high. The decoration is similar to that of the main trading floor. Gray marble is used for the walls and public corridors, while the private corridors have Dover marble wainscoting and Alabama marble floors. Until 2007, there were three additional trading floors. The "Blue Room" and the "Extended Blue Room" were in 20 Broad Street, immediately south of the NYSE Building. There was also a trading room at the Continental Bank Building on 30 Broad Street, which had three additional trading posts.

Upper stories

Post included a large interior light shaft on 18 Broad Street's upper stories as part of the building's design. The location of this shaft, and that of the trading floor, is affected by the planning of the various rooms in the upper stories. On the sixth story, above the trading floor, is the boardroom (formerly the Bond Room). This room has a skylight and coffered ceiling. The walls are adorned with white and gold decorations and contain arches supported by flat pilasters. While the room was originally outfitted with semicircular tiers surrounding a dais, these have since been removed. The seventh story of 18 Broad Street contained the Luncheon Club facing New Street, which covered 12,055 square feet (1,119.9 m2). The Luncheon Club's main dining room measured 76 by 40 feet (23 by 12 m), with an 18-foot (5.5 m) high ceiling. A smaller dining room was provided for non-smokers, separated from the main dining room by a lounge. The eighth story along New Street contained the club kitchen with a mezzanine-level serving gallery. After the Luncheon Club shut down in 2006, the room was converted into an event space called Freedom Hall. The other rooms on the sixth story of 18 Broad Street included the Governor's Room on the Wall Street side, as well as the president's and secretary's rooms, committee rooms, and offices on the New Street side. The Committee on Arrangements and Admission room featured two large brass chandeliers. The other committee rooms on this story were similarly ornate. The seventh and eighth stories facing Broad Street contained committee rooms and offices. There are also offices on the upper floors at 11 Wall Street. Up to the 17th floor, a typical floor at 11 Wall Street contains 7,500 square feet (700 m2) of space, but each of the top six floors spans 3,661 square feet (340.1 m2) on average. The upper stories of both structures contain several event spaces.

History

Goods had been traded on Wall Street as early as 1725. Auctioneers had intermediated securities exchanges until 1792, when brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement to form an organization for securities trading, which later became the NYSE. In 1817, the organization re-formed as the New York Stock and Exchange Board. The broker organization began renting out space exclusively for securities trading, using several locations for the next half-century, including the Tontine Coffee House. Ten years later, the organization moved into the Merchants' Exchange at 55 Wall Street. Rapid growth in securities trading during the latter half of the nineteenth century was reflected in the growth of the Stock and Exchange Board.

Previous structure

In December 1865, the Stock and Exchange Board moved to 10 Broad Street, a T-shaped structure between Wall Street and Exchange Place. The New York Stock Exchange Building Company owned the structure, and the Exchange itself used a second-story room. The board's membership nearly doubled from 583 to 1,060 when it acquired the Open Board of Stock Brokers in 1869. The Stock and Exchange Board, originally a minor shareholder in the Building Company, bought all the company's stock in November 1870. The company acquired the lot at 12 Broad Street, and the two buildings were combined and expanded to designs by James Renwick Jr. The Stock Exchange Building reopened in September 1871. Within eight years, even the expansion was insufficient for the overcrowded NYSE. The exchange's governing committee thus purchased additional land on Broad and New Streets in late 1879. Renwick was hired for another extension of the previous Stock Exchange Building, which was completed in 1881. The expanded quarters provided better ventilation and lighting, as well as a larger board room. The expanded building, with a trading floor measuring 141 by 145 feet (43 by 44 m), was insufficient for the NYSE's needs by 1885. That year, the city's sanitary engineers described the plumbing and ventilation as inadequate. The board room, nearer New Street, was expanded yet again in 1887 toward Broad Street. An 1891 guidebook characterized the Stock Exchange Building as a five-story French Renaissance marble structure, with a spur toward Wall Street, adjoining the Mortimer Building to the northeast. Even though the building sat largely on Broad and New Streets, it had become more closely associated with Wall Street. The building was largely shaped like a letter "T" and had a much longer frontage on New Street than on Broad Street. By the end of the 1890s, the structure was again overcrowded.

Planning and construction

The NYSE acquired the plots at 16–18 Broad Street in late 1898 after two years of negotiation. The 16–18 Broad Street site cost more than $800,000 (equivalent to $25.67 million in 2024) and contained the Union Building. The NYSE was planning yet another expansion to its building, which was to start in 1903 after the plots' existing lease expired. The NYSE acquired the Swan Building on 8 Broad Street in January 1899, paying $425,000 (equivalent to $13.5 million in 2024) for the structure. The land cost $1.25 million in total (equivalent to $38.63 million in 2024). The resulting plot, with an estimated total value of $3.5 million (equivalent to $108.17 million in 2024), measured 153 feet (47 m) wide on New Street and 138 feet (42 m) wide on Broad Street. Eight architects were invited to participate in an architectural design competition for a replacement building on the site. This competition involved a brief by architects William Ware and Charles W. Clinton. The foremost consideration was that the trading floor had to be an open space with few to no interruptions. The NYSE solicited proposals for a structure that had banking space on the ground floor, as well as proposals with no such space. The plans had to consider the lot's complex topography, unusual shape, underlying ground, and the removal of the large deposit vault. The publicist Ivy Lee wrote that the structure was to "be both monumental architecturally and equipped with every device that mechanics, electricity or ingenuity could supply with every resource needed to transact the security trading for the commercial center of the world". The exchange briefly contemplated an eight-to-nine-story structure with offices above its trading floor, but the NYSE ultimately discarded this proposal as unwieldy. The NYSE governors ultimately decided against including a ground-level banking room, which they felt would restrict movement during emergencies. In December 1899, the NYSE's governing committee unanimously approved the submission by George B. Post. That month, a committee was formed to oversee the construction of the new building. Post continued to revise his design during the next year. By July 1900, the NYSE had arranged to move to the New York Produce Exchange at Bowling Green while the replacement NYSE Building was being constructed. Post filed plans for the building with the New York City Department of Buildings on April 19, 1901. Eight days later, the traders stopped working at the old building. The cornerstone was laid on September 9, 1901. The contractors excavating the site had to work around the old vault, which not only had to be preserved while the new vault and foundations were being built, but had to be delicately demolished afterward. Initially, the contractors had planned for the new structure to be completed within one year of the old building's closure. Various issues delayed the opening by one year, including difficulty in demolishing the old building, as well as alterations made to the original plan during construction. R. H. Thomas, a chairman of the committee that oversaw construction, justified the delay by saying, "Where so many of our members spend the active years of their lives, they are entitled to the best that architectural ingenuity and engineering skill can produce." Over two thousand guests attended the building's dedication ceremony on April 22, 1903. The event included speeches from Rudolph Keppler, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Seth Low, the mayor of New York City. The trading floor opened for business the following 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."