Lock, Stock & Farewell? : NYSE May Be Leaving Its Historic HQ
The New York Stock Exchange is considering abandoning its historic but cramped headquarters, the fulcrum of the New York financial district since 1903, exchange officials said Monday.
The landmark building at Wall and Broad streets--witness to events ranging from financial panics to euphoric ticker tape parades--is running out of space, particularly for its signature trading floor.
The exchange “is in the preliminary stages of examining its needs vis-a-vis its physical plant,” but no move is imminent, an NYSE spokesman said.
Real estate baron Donald Trump is in “deep discussions” with the exchange about building a new facility on the East River at the foot of Wall Street, according to a source close to the talks. It would include a 120,000-square-foot trading floor--nearly four times the size of the current one, the source said.
A rival plan reportedly would put the exchange a few blocks farther south at an existing 33-story office building on the edge of Battery Park at the southernmost tip of Manhattan.
New York officials are involved in the discussions, seeing the development of a new NYSE headquarters as a chance to create construction jobs and pump some life into a flagging commercial real estate market. The overall vacancy rate for downtown office space was a steep 20.1% at midyear, according to a survey by Cushman & Wakefield.
The possible NYSE relocation, first reported in Monday’s New York Post, was the hottest topic at an unscheduled news conference Monday by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Giuliani said he had received assurances from NYSE Chairman Richard A. Grasso that the 204-year-old institution was not considering leaving New York but “wanted to look for a place for a more modern exchange.”
For investors, a relocation would have little impact. Although brokers and stock specialists still jot orders on slips of paper on the trading floor, computers do the real work of handling the exchange’s huge volume, which this year is averaging a record 420 million shares a day. When the current headquarters opened in 1903, by contrast, the volume was 160.7 million shares for the full year, NYSE spokesman Andrew Yemma said.
As technology advances, brokerage houses and investment banks no longer feel the need to cluster together physically in the financial district. Indeed, such firms as Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley and PaineWebber have moved to Midtown or other non-Wall Street locations, and many regional firms maintain no New York office at all.
However, when the NYSE moves from its headquarters, it will leave behind nearly a century of history in the grand building designed by architect George B. Post.
The Broad Street main entrance--which resembles a Greek temple with its Corinthian marble columns supporting a wide, carved pediment--was the setting for a singular drama on Oct. 24, 1929: Black Thursday.
As a visiting Winston Churchill stood in the exchange’s visitors gallery, crowds of stunned investors gathered six deep outside to learn details of their ruin in the stock market’s worst crash.
But the exchange has also beheld happier days, such as the 1962 ticker tape parade celebrating astronaut John Glenn’s orbital flight.
“The cost of renovating the building to carry it into the next century would be almost prohibitive,” said Richard Kennedy, associate director of Cushman & Wakefield and an expert on downtown New York real estate. “Its ability to expand and prepare for technological change would be a lot more difficult on that site.”
Mayor Giuliani, at his impromptu news conference, said it is vital that Manhattan retain the exchange because “it is what makes New York City the nation’s financial capital.”
