{"nrhp_refnum":"72000872","name":"First National City Bank","other_names":["Merchant's Exchange"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"55 Wall St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.70618304000004,"lon":-74.00949111899996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1972-08-18","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A bank building at 55 Wall Street in Manhattan, built as the Merchant's Exchange between 1836 and 1842 and enlarged in 1907. It is eight stories high, clad in granite, and fully exposed on all four sides.","why_significant":"The nomination calls it an extremely handsome, monumental Classical building with probably the tallest monolithic columns in the city. It combines Isaiah Rogers's Greek Revival base with a 1907 addition by McKim, Mead & White. It is also presented as a successful enlargement that kept good proportions and Classical tradition, and as a visible expression of commercial power.","narrative":"Occupying a quadrilateral site at 55 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, this granite building began as the Merchant's Exchange, built between 1836 and 1842 to a design by Isaiah Rogers. It replaced an older exchange lost in the Great Fire of 1835. In 1862 it became the United States Custom House, and when customs operations moved to the Battery, the National City Bank acquired the building and saved it. In 1907 McKim, Mead & White added four stories, topping the original Ionic colonnade with a Corinthian one in keeping with Classical precedent. The result is an eight-story building with a great coffered banking hall and what are probably the tallest monolithic columns in the city. It is also one of the few landmark buildings in New York fully exposed on all four sides. The nomination describes it as a monumental Classical work and a successful enlargement that preserved its proportions.","period_of_significance":"Base 1842; upper stories 1907 (19th and 20th centuries)","architect_builder":"Isaiah Rogers (original Merchant's Exchange); McKim, Mead & White (1907 addition)","architectural_style":"Classical; Greek Revival base with early 20th-century Classical addition","criteria":[],"status_note":"Listed as occupied, in excellent condition and altered; owned by the bank and in commercial use.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:38.709995-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/72000872.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"07000063","name":"Wall Street Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/new-york/wall-street-historic-district-07000063/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319495","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":null},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/first-national-city-bank-72000872/"}