Wow! eBook
The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance
Author(s): Robert E. Wright (Author)
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press
- Publication Date: December 1, 2005
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 218 pages
- ISBN-10: 0226910261
- ISBN-13: 9780226910260
Book Description
This capital helped make Philadelphia home to the Bank of the United States, the U.S. Mint, an active securities exchange, and several banks and insurance companies—all clustered in or around Chestnut Street. But as the decades passed, financial institutions were lured to New York, and by the late 1820s only the powerful Second Bank of the United States upheld Philadelphia’s financial stature. But when Andrew Jackson vetoed its charter, he sealed the fate of Chestnut Street forever—and of Wall Street too.
Finely nuanced and elegantly written,
The First Wall Street will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the United States and the origins of its unrivaled economy.Editorial Reviews
Review
“Students of early national and financial history will profit from this work. Wright’s narrative resurrects much long-forgotten informaition, and his analysis effectively underpins his broad thesis: Without financial markets and institutions to serve them, economic growth and modernization are impossible. Wright is at his best when explaining with remarkable clarity, the complex financial conditions that accounted for Chestnut Street’s dominance.” — Carl Lane ―
Journal of American History“If looking for an entertaining stroll through the rise and fall of Philadelphia as the hub of American finance from the late colonial period to the Bank War, one needs to go no further. . . . Effectively bridging academic and non-academic audiences is a difficult feat indeed, but one that we have come to expect from a scholar as prolific as Wright.” — Peter L. Rousseau ―
EH.Net“An outstanding, accessible account of Philadelphia’s status as the nation’s first financial center. Robert Wright has written a breezy, clear, and humorous history of the city’s central role as the American capital of banking and related industries.” — Kyle Farley ―
Pennsylvania Magazine of History“Wright, a distinguished historian of early American finance, has written an unusual book that will interest both history buffs and academic historians. . . . The prose is lively and the explanations clear; the short discussion of money is perhaps the best introduction to that complex subject now available, and can be read with profit by any scholar forced to confront the complexities of monetary history.” — Russell R. Menard ―
American Historical Review“Wright reminds us that prior to Wall Street’s ascendance in the 1830s, Chestnut Street in Philadelphia was the nation’s financial center and the birthplace of some of America’s most important financial innovations. . . . Wright succeeds in his aim to engage both the scholarly and general reader and has produced an important contribution to the history of early American finance.” — Daniel Holt ―
Enterprise & Society
