The Tontine Coffee-House (2018)

Those who know a bit about New York’s financial past have almost certainly heard of the Buttonwood Agreement. In 1792, two dozen stockbrokers signed a now famous pact agreeing to trade directly with each other, bypassing any middlemen, under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street. This agreement standardized trading between them and is thus thought of as setting the foundation for what would become the New York Stock Exchange. But connecting the agreement signed in 1792 to today’s stock exchange on the corner of Wall and Broad is a story involving an antique insurance product and a coffee shop by the same name. Needing a place to do business outside the rain, Wall Street’s earliest brokers settled on a coffee shop. But no existing one would suffice, a new one, called the Tontine Coffee-House, would be created for the purpose of being New York’s first post-Buttonwood exchange. Where does insurance come into this story; well, the startup capital for the place was provided for by an archaic an ... Read full article.