National City Bank Building Interior ARCHITECT: Isaiah Rogers DATE: 1836-41 STYLE: Roman The National City Bank’s president, James Stillman wanted an impressive banking hall as the symbol for his bank which was, at the time, the most important financial institution in the country. The bank interior was designed to suggest a classical Roman hall on a grand scale. The monumental Corinthian columns support an elegant entablature, the huge barrel vaults, and the tall, arched windows with the delicate balconies which traverse them. The elegant materials and fine details show the mastery that the architects achieved. Fine proportions and elegant details are combined here to form one of New York’s grandest interior spaces.

A walking tours through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings on Wall Street.

“Hanover Street, south from Wall Street to Exchange Place, showing (right), a portion of the National City Bank building and (left), a portion of the new Wall and Hanover building. Also shown (under demolition) is the Canadian Bank of Commerce building, at the N.W. corner of Exchange Place and Hanover Street. At the top foreground of the view, is visible part of a foot bridge, connecting the National City Bank with the Wall and Hanover buildings. September 12, 1929.” - P.L. Sperr The National City Bank building at 55 Wall Street had been the Merchants’ Exchange and a U.S. Customs House during the 19th century. Between 1899-1908, architect Charles McKim led the building’s redevelopment as the headquarters of the National City Bank (known as Citibank since 1976). During renovations, workers discovered a cannonball, gunpowder and various makeshift munitions, likely a stockpile leftover from the Draft Riots of 1863. Sperr’s series of Wall Street photographs were taken in September 1929, just one month before the calamitous stock market crash that sent financial markets into crisis.

National City Bank Building, 1931.

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

First National City Bank. When the great fire of 1835 ravaged a larger part of lower Manhattan, Town and Davis' beautiful Merchants' Exchange on Wall Street was completely gutted. The merchants resolved to rebuild it on a grander scale in fireproof construction. The great Ionic colonnade above the granite base is original. After several years it was occupied by the United States Government Customs House. It was remodeled as we see it today, with its upper floor added, by McKim, Mead & White for the National City Bank.

A stately survivor from the mid-nineteenth century, 55 Wall Street was the second Merchant’s Exchange on this site. Architect Isaiah Rogers designed a three-story structure that made a monumental statement on Wall Street with a colonnade of colossal ionic columns. The building served as an exchange for buying and selling commodities, and for the offices of many prominent shippers, merchants, auctioneers, and brokers. The interior was originally divided into a warren of offices and large meeting rooms. It also served as the meeting place of the precursor to the New York Stock Exchange. In 1907, McKim Mead & White adapted the Exchange for use as a headquarters for the National City Bank, then the nation’s largest. To meet the needs of a modern bank, an additional four stories were added, masked by a second colonnade executed in the same granite as Roger’s original. The interior of Roger’s Merchant’s Exchange was opened up to form an impressive three-story banking hall. McKim’s addition was a sympathetic reconfiguring of this structure of great historical and architectural significance. In the late 1990’s the Merchants Exchange was again adapted to suit the needs of a new use when it was converted into a hotel, dining, and events complex. McKim’s imperial-scaled banking hall is now the backdrop for some of the city’s most exclusive parties and fundraisers.