page_title: 55 Wall Street
section_title: Merchants' Exchange
hierarchical_section_title: 55 Wall Street / History / Merchants' Exchange
context_page_description: 55 Wall Street, also formerly known as the National City Bank Building, is an eight-story building on Wall Street between William and Hanover streets in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The lowest three stories were built in 1836–1841 as the four-story Merchants' Exchange and designed by Isaiah Rogers in the Greek Revival style. Between 1907 and 1910, McKim, Mead & White removed the original fourth story and added five floors.
  55 Wall Street contains a facade of granite, with two colonnades of twelve columns facing Wall Street, one on top of the other. Inside is a cruciform banking hall with a 60-foot vaulted ceiling, Corinthian columns, marble floors and walls, and an entablature around the interior. The banking hall was among the largest in the United States when it was completed, and was later turned into a ballroom. The offices of National City Bank, predecessor bank of Citibank, were located in the corners of the banking hall. The fourth through eighth floors were used as office space, but have since been converted to residential units.
context_section_description: The site of 55 Wall Street was previously occupied by a house built in 1656 and a block of housing built in 1789. The original building of the Merchants' Exchange was erected between April 1825 and June 1827, and opened for business on May 1, 1827. It was designed in the Greek Revival style by Alexander Jackson Davis, Ithiel Town, and Samuel Thompson. The two-story-with-raised-basement structure had a frontage of 114 feet (35 m) along Wall Street and had a depth of 150 feet (46 m) to Exchange Place. The main facade was made of white Tuckahoe marble, and the entrance portico had a marble staircase and four Ionic columns. At the top of the building was a colonnaded cupola rising 120 feet (37 m). The first structure was used by grain merchants, though it also had a post office, the New York Chamber of Commerce, and the New York Stock Exchange. While the original building contributed to a redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhood, it burned down in the Great Fire of New York in December 1835.
  The Merchants' Exchange's committee of trustees convened in February 1836, proposing to build a larger building on the site of the older structure. The remaining lots on the block were acquired for this purpose. The same year, construction started on a new building designed by Isaiah Rogers. According to Rogers's private diaries, he moved his family to a house on the block while construction was ongoing. A time capsule was also placed within the building's foundations, though a search for the capsule in the 1990s was unsuccessful. The Quincy-granite columns were delivered as single blocks via sea; oxen pulled the columns along Wall Street from the dock to the building site. The building was completed in either 1841 or 1842. The last column was not installed until December 16, 1844, the ninth anniversary of the Great Fire. The new structure was initially occupied by the National Bank of Commerce until 1853, and a post office in the building operated until 1845. The Stock Exchange was also situated in 55 Wall Street until 1854.
caption: The original Merchants' Exchange was built in 1827 and destroyed on December 16, 1835.
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