What Is The Buttonwood Agreement And Why Was It Formed

Long before the One World Trade Center overlooked Lower Manhattan, an American sycamore or woodwood on Wall Street was the highest thing in the area and the mall. 225 years ago, on May 17, 1792, 24 brokers and traders under the same tree signed the so-called Buttonwood Agreement, which set the trading parameters in the first incarnation of the New York Stock Exchange. 33. Palmer, William Pitt, “Monody on the Lone Tree,” Journal of Commerce (06 21, 1865) Google Scholar. In addition to the “monody,” Palmer was also the author of the “Lines to the Loan Tree Near `Change,” also a pedestrianist, in the same issue of the Journal of Commerce. The tree is identified as sycamore, and “button wood” does not appear anywhere. 13. The auctions under the Broadside Agreement of September 1791 and other important meetings of brokers in 1791 and 1792 took place inside (New York Daily Advertiser, 02 15 and 03 21 and 24 1792Google Scholar; and Werner, and Smith, Wall Street, p. 191). Google Scholar 61.

A Buttonwood Tree Grew Up Theren, and Under It They Drew Up This Agreement, drawing in Zeisloff, , New Metropolis, p. 444-46Google Scholar. Another important image of the Legend of Buttonwood was on a medallion beaten in 1922 by the Medallic Art Company for the NYSE, which represented a trio of brokers arranged in a Three Grace-like pose in front of the button tree above a large “1792”. This was a common image in the official literature of the NYSE for several decades and is reproduced on the cover of Buck, New York Stock Exchange. 23. Outside observers of the exchange have often described their affair as an obscure and enigmatic ritual, as in this report circa 1850: “the small group, composed of two scores of insiders who understood the mysterious jargon within the red-predatory sanctuary of the Stock Exchange, and some amazing outsiders who know no more than the epicurean of Isis`s secrets … Mid-sentences, broken sentences, mysterious gestures as signs – these form the notebook of what is done here. If you don`t have the key, you might as well be a companion of worship in a Chinese temple” (Foster, George, New York of Gas-Light, Ed. Blumin, Stuart A. [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990], 220-27).

Google Scholar We solemnly promise and promise subscribers, brokers for the purchase and sale of public action, and we solemnly promise to each other that from this day we will not buy or sell for any person, any type of public action, to less than a quarter of a hundred percent commission on the spec value and that we will make ourselves prefer each other in our negotiations.