New York Stock Exchange Building
The New York Stock Exchange Building is the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange, 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 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 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. 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, 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.Facade
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 above sidewalk level. 18 Broad Street has a frontage of on New Street and 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 in diameter and 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 wide by 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 above the sidewalk and about 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 on Broad Street, on Wall Street, and on New Street. 11 Wall Street has an overall height of. 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 of pipes were used to heat and cool the offices. Four boilers generated a combined of steam, while three power generators were capable of a combined. 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 of electricity, 8,000 phone circuits on the trading floor alone, and 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 wide, long, and high, weighing when empty. A basement corridor led to the Wall Street station of the city's first subway line, under Broadway.The lowest basement level is 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 each.