American Bank Note Company Building, Trinity Place

Here is the text published in the 1892 King's Handbook about the American Bank Note Co.:

«The American Bank Note Company conducts one of the most famous industries of the country, and one which has won the respect and admiration of the world for America's artists and skilled mechanics. Its renown has been the result of a rare combination of the highest artistic and mechanical skill through a long experience, and its standing to-day is unequalled. The business was founded in 1795 ; incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1858 ; and enlarged and re-organized in 1879. The early and widespread use of paper money rendered it imperative to produce engraved work which could not be counterfeited. The best artists competed in making designs, skilful chemists devised inks to be brilliant and ineradicable, or deleble and sensitive, and inventors applied the principles of mechanics to intricate geometrical engraving. The consolidation of these interests as the American Bank Note Company united the resources and reputation, the safe-guards and facilities, of a century's experience, with abundant capital to test new inventions and acquire new processes. The company has prepared securities to the value of millions and millions of dollars, and bank-notes innumerable, also postage-stamps, bonds, stocks, diplomas, drafts, etc., not only for the Government and financial institutions of the United States, but also for Canada and the West Indies, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, [El] Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, the Argentine Republic, Uruguay, Brazil, Russia, Greece, Italy, Spain, England, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan. Besides its steel-plate engraving, the American Bank Note Company has executed for railroads and various corporations many of the most notable specimens of letter-press printing, in black and in colors. Special styles and grades of paper, suitable for securities, are manufactured exclusively for the use of the company. There is a department of lithographing, and also a department of type-printing, entirely distinct from that of engraving, in which those two important branches of the company's business are conducted. Special attention is paid to making railway-tickets, and the establishment is equipped to produce every variety of numbered or unnumbered tickets, in the improved styles. In its ticket-department are many of the most ingenious machines known in the printing industry. The company built and owns, at 78 to 86 Trinity Place, close by Trinity Church, its commodious and attractive fire-proof establishment, extending through to the next street, covering ten city lots. The buildings are of brick and iron, and are seven to nine stories in height. They overlook Trinity Churchyard, which gives to the windows a view of a busy section of Broadway. This position also assures to the company an unobstructed light for all time, and makes the location especially valuable. The general offices of the company, which occupy the entire second floor of the Trinity-Place front of the building, are exceptionally exquisite and most conveniently arranged. Entrance thereto is had through a large foyer at the northern end, from which leads a massive stairway. The building is thoroughly fire-proof, and has numerous fire-proof vaults. Its equipment of machinery is elaborate, complete and costly. The whole establishment is the most elegant and extensive of its class in the world. The present officers and trustees of the American Bank Note Company are James Macdonough, President ; Augustus D. Shepard and Touro Robertson, Vice-Presidents ; Theodore H. Freeland, Secretary and Treasurer; John E. Currier, Assistant-Secretary; J. K. Myers, Assistant Treasurer ; P. C. Lounsbury, W. J. Arkell, T. H. Porter, E. C. Converse, Jos. S. Stout, James B. Ford, Elliott F. Shepard. The officers have been connected with the business represented thirty and forty years, and have had the principal direction of its affairs during all this period. Besides its New- York establishment, the American Bank Note Company has branches in Boston and Philadelphia.»