Merchants' Exchange Building (Philadelphia)

Origin

The City Tavern, built in 1773, had become the center of Philadelphia's business community but its floor plan grew unsuitable for the increasing clientele. During the Jacksonian era, an economic boom reinforced the merchants' need for a centralized exchange building. In 1831, a group led by Stephen Girard, then the nation's wealthiest man, founded the Philadelphia Exchange Company and appointed an architect to begin work on what became the Merchants' Exchange Building.

Architecture

The Greek Revival movement gained appeal in the late eighteenth century as ancient Greece's democratic principles rose in popularity and Americans sought to distance the nation's image from Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson appointed Benjamin Henry Latrobe to design prominent federal buildings in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, leading the country toward the Greek Revival style. William Strickland, a mentee of Latrobe, was appointed architect of the Merchants' Exchange Building.

The trustees chose Strickland for his growing local popularity. The building's triangular plot was one of the few not part of William Penn's original grid layout. Strickland adapted the design to the curved road by using a semicircular facade at the rear, giving the two sides distinctively different facades. He employed marble Corinthian pillars and elaborate ornamentation, and drew inspiration from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates for the lantern tower.

A local newspaper wrote in 1831 that 'Philadelphia is truly the Athens of America.' Strickland later designed the Second Bank of the United States and the steeple on Independence Hall Tower, but the Merchants' Exchange Building is widely recognized as his greatest masterpiece due to its unique asymmetrical shape.