A Great Week in Car History

What a great week in car history! Let’s start with July 30, 1863, when Henry Ford famously said, “If I’d listened to what my customers wanted, I’d have given them a faster horse.” Also this week, on August 1, 1941, Jeep rolled out its first ever model and on August 3, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company will celebrate its 112^th Anniversary.

Thanks to the brilliance that was Henry Ford’s mind and the ingenuity of inventors and engineers who continued his legacy, America saw the birth of a car industry that would revolutionize the way we did everything! From, getting ourselves around town, to increasing travel beyond our city limits, to expanding our knowledge and access to the world around us, cars have become a way of life, a method for bandying social status, and for many people, a tangible portrayal of their own personalities.

Here in Manhattan, however, you’ll notice we use our cars mostly to sit in traffic. That’s why Wall Street Walks hits the town on our feet to get the most out of what this amazing city has to offer! Be sure to check out one of our incredible tours while you’re in town this summer. Happy August!

The Curb Market

Way before the New York Stock Exchange moved into it’s current home at 11 Wall Street, trading was done in an outdoor space at 30 Broad Street known as The Curb Market and the traders were known as the New York Curb Market.

For almost ten years traders bought and sold shares outside until they moved indoors on July 27, 1921, to a building in Lower Manhattan. Led by, Edward McCormick, the Curb Market’s chairman, brokers ceremoniously marched up Wall Street to their newly completed building on Trinity Place behind Trinity Church.

In 1929, the New York Curb Market changed its name to the New York Curb Exchange and soon became the top international stock market. Years later in 1953, they renamed themselves once again and became the American Stock Exchange. 

The Duel that Led to Alexander Hamilton's Death

You might remember the great “Got Milk” commercial from the 90’s that featured a historical museum’s curator eating a peanut butter sandwich. His local radio station calls and offers him $10,000 if he can tell them who shot Alexander Hamilton in the July 11, 1804, duel that led to his death.

The answer, which the curator couldn’t get out because he didn’t have milk, was Aaron Burr, the sitting Vice President of the United States at the time of the shooting. In the duel, Burr shot and fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton. Once he was injured, Hamilton was transferred from Weehawken, New Jersey, where the duel had taken place, to Manhattan, where he died at a house on Jane Street in Greenwich Village the next day.

Hamilton’s funeral was held two days later on July 14 at Trinity Church in the Wall Street area. He was buried in the adjacent Trinity Churchyard where his son Philip, also the victim of a duel, had been buried three years prior. Because dueling had recently been outlawed in New York and New Jersey before the Burr-Hamilton duel, the incident created a huge political uproar and Burr was indicted for murder, though he was never convicted.

A Big Week in New York History

This week is a big one in New York history. Back in 1916, Wall Street lost its Witch, Hetty Green, on July 3. Green was the first female tycoon in the US and was known around town as the “Witch of Wall Street.” An heiress to a multi-million dollar fortune, she was infamous for her stinginess and was rumored to go so far as to never use hot water and to ask her laundress to only wash the dirtiest parts of her dresses to save on soap.

On Wednesday, we celebrate the Fourth of July in honor of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and our official separation from Great Britain on July 4, 1776. If you’re in the city, pay tribute to our country on a 90-minute tour of historic Wall Street and Ground Zero, or a 2-hour tour of Wall Street and the 9/11 Memorial. Afterwards, make your way to the West Side to stake out your claim to watch the stupendous fireworks display along the Hudson from 16^th Street all the way up to midtown. 

July 7, New York celebrates the 249^th birthday of its first multi-millionaire, one-time opium smuggler, John Jacob Astor. Born in Waldorf, Germany, Astor migrated to the US after the Revolutionary War. Arriving at age 21, with no money to speak of, he soon made a fortune in the fur trade. By the time of his death in 1848, John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the country.

Two noteworthy New York events happened on July 8^th. The first is another birthday – John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839. He is the senior of the Rockefeller dynasty and is one of New York’s most acclaimed philanthropists. With only $2000, Rockefeller formed his first partnership in 1859, and just four years later they were running their own oil refinery. In 1870, when Rockefeller organized The Standard Oil Company at the age of 31, the business had a capital of $1 million.

Also on July 8, we commemorate the first edition of the Wall Street Journal. Volume 1, Number 1 was published in 1889 and the price was two cents. Today it is #1 most-read newspapers, with a daily circulation of over 2,000,000 copies worldwide. Though it’s named after the street in New York’s financial district, the WSJ headquarters are now located on Sixth Avenue near Rockefeller Center.

Jesse Lauriston Livermore, the Great Bear of Wall Street

June 26th marks the 135th birthday of Jesse Lauriston Livermore, the “Great Bear of Wall Street.” Known as one of the greatest traders of all time, Livermore’s life and career were a dedication to the study and mastery of stock and commodity movement and prices.

For Jesse, life began in rural Massachusetts where he was the child of a poor farmer, seemingly doomed to repeat the same fate as his father. At 14, with his mother’s blessing and her $5, he ran away from home to escape the hardship of life on a farm.

His stock market success started that same year in “bucket shops,” gambling halls where Livermore made over $1000 (over $20,000 by 2012 standards) placing bets on stock prices before he ever actually bought or sold a single share. Once he began trading in legitimate markets, Livermore both earned and lost millions upon millions of dollars.

Jesse Livermore is quoted as saying that his losses were the result of not listening to his own advice. At the height of his fortune, his worth was in the billions by today’s standards. Although his death was over 70 years ago, Livermore’s book, “How to Trade in Stocks,” is still listed among the top books ever written on finance and Wall Street.

The Dinner Table Bargain

On June 20, 1790 in New York City, US forefather Thomas Jefferson held one of the most significant and pivotal dinner parties of the century. In attendance were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and then president, George Washington.

The discussion at hand involved both Hamilton’s longing to standardize the nation’s accounts including a federal assumption of all state debts, estimated at about $80 million, and James Madison’s concern over the potential final location of the nation’s capital. As a Virginian, Madison feared his state would lose influence if the capital were to be placed in the North.

Madison had openly fought Hamilton’s plan, so Jefferson offered to bring the men together to talk over the situation. Known as the Dinner Table Bargain, this meeting of the minds led to the Compromise of 1790. By the end of the evening, the men reached an agreement: Hamilton would support the Potomac site for the new capital and Madison would no longer block assumption in Congress.

Years later, Jefferson would claim that he had been tricked into the evening’s agreement by Hamilton. A blow that was surely softened when in 1801, he took office as the first president in the new city on the Potomac River known as Washington.

Happy Birthday Donald Trump!

You know the man, you know the empire, you know the hair …  but did you know that it was his birthday? This week on June 14, Donald J. Trump will turn 66 years old and he certainly has a lot of reasons to celebrate.

Born in 1946, in Queens, “The Donald” became a public figure as the result of his hugely successful career as a real estate developer in New York City during the late 70’s and 80’s. His building projects include the Grand Hyatt hotel on 42nd Street at Grand Central Terminal and the apartment-retail complex he built on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the iconic Trump Tower. 

Trump enjoyed unfathomable, well-publicized success for many years until a financial blow at his casino, the Taj Mahal, and a plummet in the real estate market in 1990, caused his net worth to drop drastically.

Not one to be beaten easily, Trump worked his way back and by the late 90’s got his net worth up into the multiple-billions. These days he enjoys a thriving career not only in real estate and development, but also in entertainment ventures such as producing beauty pageants, managing Central Park’s ice skating rinks and acting as a reality star on his own television show, The Celebrity Apprentice.