New York Mercantile Exchange Building

6 Harrison Street | also 97 Hudson Street, 2 Harrison Street | Tribeca | built 1885

Open on the map5 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1885

    The Mercantile Exchange outgrows its rooms and builds a trading hall at Hudson and Harrison Streets

    The exchange began in 1872 as the Butter and Cheese Exchange of New York and first met at 309 Greenwich Street. After adding groceries, dried fruit, canned goods and poultry, it took the name New York Mercantile Exchange in 1882. Needing more room, it moved temporarily to the Erie Building and bought land from Trinity Church at Hudson and Harrison Streets. Its two-story trading floor, finished with mosaic tile, mahogany and brass, stayed in use until the exchange left in 1977.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1885

    Thomas R. Jackson gives the Mercantile Exchange a Queen Anne front with a mansard-capped tower

    Jackson's five-story building for the Mercantile Exchange stands on the corner of Hudson and Harrison Streets, 75 feet along Hudson and 97 along Harrison. It mixes Queen Anne with Romanesque Revival details: granite piers, tall arcaded windows that mark the two-story trading floor, paired columns and corbelled brick. A square tower with a mansard roof holds the main entrance, a granite porch with paired columns.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1886

    April 6

    Over 800 guests tour the new Mercantile Exchange and dance on its maple trading floor

    On the evening of April 6, 1886, invited guests came to see the exchange's new $400,000 building. More than 800 well-dressed people arrived by carriage while the 7th Regiment Band played. After the tour the hall's maple floor became a dance floor, and The New York Times noted that by late evening plenty of feet were moving.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1941

    Potato futures arrive at the Mercantile Exchange, widening its trade beyond butter and eggs

    For decades butter, eggs and cheese were the exchange's main goods, mostly traded for cash. Bids and offers were shouted from the floor and posted on large blackboards by pairs of clerks, one left-handed and one right-handed so they did not block the traders' view; later, traders gathered around a brass ring in pit trading. Potato futures began in 1941 and onion futures in 1946. Platinum futures came in the 1950s, and silver, gold and oil followed in the 1970s.

    Source: tribecatrib.com

  5. 1977

    The Mercantile Exchange leaves for the World Trade Center after a Maine potato default nearly sinks it

    By the mid-1970s the Harrison Street building was too small and could not take new technology. In 1976 the Maine potato crop failed, and growers could not deliver some 50 million pounds against nearly 1,000 futures contracts written at the exchange. Its reserves were too small to compensate traders and it came close to collapse, but younger members, including Michel Marks, reorganized it. The exchange moved to the World Trade Center in 1977.

    Source: tribecatrib.com

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