Wall Street and Water Street

Wall Street at Water Street, New York City, oil on linen, showing Tontine Coffee House (left) and Wall Street, leading down to the East River, about 1797, by English-born painter Francis Guy (1760–1820), who arrived from England in 1795. He was one of the earliest landscape and genre painters in the United States. Before the end of the 18th century, he moved to Baltimore. He moved to Brooklyn in 1817. Source (image): New-York Historical Society.

The Tontine Coffee House was built on Wall Street, on the northwest corner of Water Street in 1792-1793. It was an historic meeting place for merchants and traders to bargain for cargo from ships arriving at the East River wharves visible on the right, in the distance. The Tontine Coffee House changed its statutes in 1834 and it was renamed Tontine Building in 1843. The building was demolished in 1855, replaced by a new Tontine Building. The old Merchant’s Coffee House, established in the 1730s, opened on the same site, but moved later to the opposite side of Wall Street (on the right). It burned in 1804. More: Wall Street in 18th century ►