Robert E. Wright, The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Robert E. Wright, The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

The (Second) Bank of the United (1816-1836)

Preface
1 Of Financial Markets and Marketplaces
2 Colonial Precedents
3 Revolutionary Developments
4 Money, Money, Money [read excerpt]
5 Hamilton’s Vision
6 Hazardous Voyages
7 Building Nest Eggs and Homes
8 Transportation Elation
9 Philadelphia’s Finest
10 Wall Street Ascendant
11 Legacy of Growth
Notes

Publicity:

Ruby Leg’s Phillyville blog masterfully mixes The First Wall Street and a forthcoming DVD about Philadelphia’s more recent and tawdry history called Shame of a City. 16 March 2007.

Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN), "The First Wall Street," one-hour interview, first aired 16 April 2006.

"The City of Brotherly Love ... and Money," To listen, go to National Public Radio, Marketplace, 20 February 2006.

"The great value of Wright's book is in recalling what came before the Bank. There was the Pennsylvania government's General Loan Office. There were traders in such negotiable instruments as mortgages, promissory notes, even squirrel scalps. And there were bold investors, from Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris, his partner [Thomas Willing], and contemporary Michael Hillegas, through Nicholas Biddle, the greatest and last of the nation's early central bankers." For the full article, see New book offers fascinating history of American Finance with Philadelphia at the center........, on Philly.Com, 29 January 2006.

"The First Wall Street shows how and why competitive financial markets and institutions came to cluster in the city of brotherly love, and how Manhattan eventually won the day. ... The First Wall Street will likely interest business managers of all nationalities who are curious about a largely unknown story in U.S. financial history and who wonder, too, whether their own major avenue could ever rival the real Wall Street." For the full article, see Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge for Business Leaders, 30 January 2006.

"Wright, an enterprising (if untenured) economic historian is the author of The First Wall Street, a new book that explains how Philadelphia won and lost the title of national financial center. Before the 1840s, Chestnut Street was "the brain center of the new nation's burgeoning economy," Wright writes. "Philadelphia's early financiers were the nation's greatest innovators," creating the first modern markets in bonds, stocks, insurance and real estate." For the full article, see the Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 October 2005.

“A certain segment of the Foundation’s staff has recently discovered Robert E. Wright’s book The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance, and has glommed onto it in a big way. As I never read any of the books I buy for the library (no time, got things to do), I always appreciate staff book reviews. I’m told that this book makes a potentially dead boring topic interesting and easy to understand.” – JL Test Blog.

“Another fascinating book I’m in the process of reading is The First Wall Street. … It’s all about America during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and how financial markets and our banking institutions evolved.” – Charles Plosser, President of the Philadelphia Fed, as quoted in New Jersey Banker (Spring 2007), 34.

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Reviews:

Robert E. Wright is a scholar to be admired and applauded, not only for this book but for his many other works having to do with the economic and financial history of the early American Republic. His oeuvre is large and distinguished. From the First Wall Street they will learn the nature and importance of the financial sector of the early economy of the United States. Wright tells his story in an attractive and entertaining manner, blending erudition and education in a most appealing mix. -- History

In his lively, absorbing look at the early history of America's financial markets, Wright brings to life the financiers and their institutions with colorful prose that teases out the human drama beneath the ledgers and account books. Wright's approach is decidedly egalitarian: high-profile movers and shakers such as Michael Hilegas, Martin Van Buren and Nicholas Biddle are presented alongside the business owners, artisans and merchants who made less visible contributions to America's financial sector. Both a history of the nation's first financial capital and a surprisingly understandable financial primer, the book will appeal to readers interested in America's economic history and those wanting a better handle on banking and investing. -- Publishers' Weekly

Robert E. Wright, a distinguished historian of early American finance, has written an unusual book that will interest both history buffs and academic historians. It uses the rise and decline of Philadelphia as the financial center of the early republic as a way of introducing the financial history of the young United States and advancing a finance-led interpretation of early American economic growth. Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, Wright's book summarizes and makes accessible a large and often obscure technical literature on early American financial history. I recommend the book highly. 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. – American Historical Review

This book is about more than just the institutions and practices development by the US's first generation of financial innovators, most of who lived and worked in Philadelphia. It also discusses the importance of a strong financial system to any emerging nation seeking economic growth. The author helps explain the evolution of the US from an important colonial center to an emergent world power. The book provides lessons about innovation, regulation, and competition that should not be lost on the current denizens of Wall Street. -- Financial History

Wright has succeeded in writing a jaunty narrative about Philadelphia's role in creating America's earliest financial institutions and their place in securing the young republic's prosperity. Wright embraces an explanatory style designed for the general reader and has an eye for lively detail. -- Philadelphia Magazine

The First Wall Street fills an important role in the scholarship on early national finance, namely, an up-to-date and accessible survey of many of the various public and private financial institutions and devices Philadelphians pioneered in the early national period. Boasting colorful and well-researched vignettes of Philadelphia's financial trailblazers along with cogent and clear explications of heretofore arcane instruments and institutions, The First Wall Street covers numerous topics that have either been poorly explained or neglected even by economic historians specializing in the period. -- Reviews in American History

Students of early national and financial history will profit from this work. Wright's narrative resurrects much long-forgotten information, 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. -- Journal of American History

The First Wall Street is Robert Wright’s latest installment in his campaign to highlight financial institutions as the driving force in the economic and political history of the Early Republic. 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’s narrative is well-researched and informative and rightly returns Philadelphia to center stage in the financial history of the Early Republic. Wright succeeds in his aim to engage both the scholarly and general reader and has produced an important contribution in the history of early American finance. – Enterprise & Society

If looking for an entertaining stroll through the rise and fall of Philadelphia as the hub of American finance from the late colonial period through the Bank War, one needs to go no further. At the same time, the book is a fine starting point for considering more extended research on the wide range of financial topics addressed therein. 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. It leaves me in anticipation of what new ground his next work will cover. -- EH.Net

The First Wall Street is 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. Wright has created an artful narrative to explain Philadelphia's success, leadership, and centrality in the early American economy from the early eighteenth century through the early republic. The First Wall Street also clearly explains the complex processes by which New York City overtook Philadelphia in financial importance by 1840. -- Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Canvassing a variety of institutions—commercial and savings banks, the U.S. Mint, and marine, life, and property insurance companies—Wright uses often colorful vignettes to illustrate the degree to which Philadelphia brokers and financiers developed risk assessment criteria to offer credit and financial services to cash-poor artisans and merchants, matching them with people who were flush with capital but reluctant to see their money vanish in a bursting bubble. Along the way, he provides a cogent financial history of the early United States. Readers see Alexander Hamilton promote a national unit of currency with the U.S. Mint and bind the federal union through the assumption of state Revolutionary War debts funded by the Bank of the United States. They learn how the U.S. Mint functioned and how the city’s fire codes were enacted at the urging of its subscription fire insurance company. They witness canal plans falter in the face of Erie Canal competition and more promising railroad opportunities. They are shown how savings banks like the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society began mirroring the kind of local credit network that Quaker meetings had long provided. Less renowned men—like Moses Lancaster and Michael Hillegas—share space with the titans of early American business to illuminate the impact institutional changes and macroeconomic forces had on microeconomic households. – Commonplace.Org

The First Wall Street is an interesting and informative account of the role of the financial sector in promoting economic growth in early America. Arguably, the most important contribution of this monograph is the use of the historical approach that provides the reader with a series of stories about financiers and financial innovations in early America. The historical accounts directly show how a financial sector can promote economic development and growth. Overall, The First Wall Street is a well-written and researched monograph. -- Journal of Economic History

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