Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
J. P. Morgan
Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.
Born Belle Marion Greener Read more >>
Banker J. P. Morgan rescued the dollar and bailed out the nation
Growing up in a family with many members who earned their livings on Wall Street and with many ancestors and relatives who had done the same, I—as might be expected—very early heard stories of business that I found as fascinating as the tales of military action I was soaking up Read more >>
When terrorists first struck New York’s financial district
If you go downtown in Manhattan to the offices of the old J. P. Morgan firm at the corner of Wall and Broad, you’ll see the pocked-marble scars of the first blow that terrorists struck at America’s financial heart, the Wall Street bombing of 1920. Read more >>
She was the great financier’s librarian—and a good deal more
In 1683 the poet laureate John Dryden brought the word biography into the English language. He defined it as “the history of particular men’s lives.” That means a lot more than just the details of a person’s life, of course. Read more >>
A ranking of the forty wealthiest Americans of all time (Surprise: Only three of them are alive today)
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
1839-1937 Read more >>
Fifty years ago the builders of the Pennsylvania Turnpike completed America’s first superhighway—and helped determine the shape of travel to come
Most American motorists take for granted the concrete and asphalt web of interstate highways that has penetrated so deeply into the nation’s economy and thinking. Read more >>
It cannot be measured in dollars alone. It involved a kind of personal power no man of affairs will ever have again.
On the night of Thursday, October 24, 1907, nearly every important banker in New York was meeting in J. P. Morgan’s exquisite private library, located next to his house at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street. Read more >>
A knowledgeable and passionate guide takes us for a walk down Wall Street, and we find the buildings there eloquent of the whole history of American finance
One of the pleasant burdens of friendship, and of living in a renowned and intimidating great city like New York, is that friends planning to visit will ask me to show them the sights of some quarter of town, most usually in the borough of Manhattan, county o Read more >>
Beatrix Farrand’s exactingly beautiful designs changed the American landscape
When Beatrix Farrand arrived to work on a garden, clients knew they were in the presence of someone extraordinary. Read more >>
About to die at the untimely age of forty-four in 1883, Dr. George Miller Beard, a Connecticut physician and pioneer in neurology, remarked: “I should like to record the thoughts of a dying man for the benefit of science, but it is impossible.” And with those words, Dr. Read more >>
How J. P. Morgan, like a “one-man Federal Reserve,” calmed the bankers and helped ease the Panic of 1907
The Monte Carlo capers of U. S. Steel’s new president outraged Andy Carnegie but never ruffled J. P. Morgan