The second oldest bank in Manhattan first opened for business at No. 40 Wall Street in 1799. Unable to obtain a bank charter from a New York legislature which was under the thumb of Alexander Hamilton, a slick politician named Aaron Burr wangled a charter for a concern to supply the City of New York with "pure & wholesome water." As all the world now knows, there was tucked away in that charter a harmless-looking clause permitting The Manhattan Co. to transact any financial business within the law.
The Manhattan Co. laid its wooden water mains and sold pure and wholesome water for nearly 50 years but its "Discount & Deposit'' office promptly became the only private competitor of Hamilton's Bank of New York. The ways of Aaron Burr and his Manhattan Co. soon parted, he to high adventure and a trial for treason, the little water company to a long and honorable history.
At last year's annual meeting the young chairman of the $500,000,000 Bank of the Manhattan Co. broke all precedents by taking his shareholders into his full confidence. Asked by a startled stockholder why he did it, Chairman John Stewart Baker, 40, replied: "The spirit of the times!"
Last week at the 136th annual meeting at No. 40 Wall Street, Chairman Baker delivered his second "spirit of the times" bank report. As frank and full as the first, it was an intimate case history of a typical big super-solvent Manhattan bank in the second year of Roosevelt II.