Hi I'm Rachel I'm one of the archivists with the JPMorgan Chase Corporate
History program. We're the department responsible for preserving the history
and heritage of the firm from its founding in 1799 to the present day
that means we collect artifacts, artwork, records, documents, old advertisements, and
photographs, anything that tells the story of JPMorgan Chase and its over
1,200 predecessor institutions and one of the ways we share those stories about
the firm in its history are through exhibits like the one I'm standing in
front of the exhibit behind me is designed to mimic what a turn of the
20th century banking hall would have looked like using artifacts and records
from JPMorgan Chase's predecessor banks. Our hope is that someone will walk into
this space and will feel like they've been transported back in time to the
early 1900s and are actually walking into a bank
branch as a as either an employee or a customer or client. Our department is
lucky enough to have these records and artifacts because of the foresight of
one individual - David Rockefeller. David Rockefeller was the chairman of Chase
Manhattan Bank in the 1975. He decided to establish the Chase Manhattan Archives
which is one of the reasons we still exist today. So what we've done for you
today is we've taken out a couple of our earliest and most historic artifacts and
we have them on display for you. They're actually they normally live in our
storage room which is right behind us. So I'm standing here with Virginia and
Virginia, what do we have here? So we have here one of our earliest
records. This is the Charter for the Manhattan Company.
So the Manhattan company was founded in 1799 by Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr,
and a number of other prominent New Yorkers, not as a bank but as a Water
Company. In the late 1700s, New Yorkers had very little access to clean water
and so this group of men decided to help improve New York city's sanitation and
the welfare of its residents they would draft a charter for a water company, but
we're oftentimes asked that's great that New York City has a water company but
how does this transform into our bank? So in this charter Aaron Burke quietly
inserted a clause that allowed the water company to open up a bank with any
excess capital which they did within six months founding the bank of the
Manhattan company. What's interesting is the water company remains in operation
until 1842 but the bank of the Manhattan company
continued to operate until 1955 when it merged with Chase national to form Chase
Manhattan Bank and then in 2000 Chase Manhattan Bank merged with JP Morgan and
company to form today's JPMorgan Chase. So we do like to say that our bank was
founded not as a bank but actually as a water company. So talking about the water
company we have a couple of other artifacts on display on display for you
today so what do we have here? So we have one of our earliest ledgers. This ledger
contains a list of subscribers to the water company among which you might
recognize named Aaron Burr and if we had time we could scroll through more pages
in this ledger and we'd be able to mention several more prominent New
Yorkers who were also some of the original stockholders of the Manhattan
company and now we have a log. So this is actually an original wood original water
pipe from the Manhattan. In 1799, they laid over six miles of
hollowed-out pine logs in the streets of lower Manhattan allowing the water to
flow from the reservoir to the homes and businesses in that area. And when the
water company ceased its operations in 1842 this the city nor
the company never really dug up the remaining wooden pipes they just let the
city grow on top of them so periodically we'll get calls from government agencies
letting us know that they've uncovered a pipe or two or ten. Yes actually
earlier this year we received ten pipes from that are over ten feet long so a
little more difficult to display for you today but they are in our storage
facility. So we hope you've enjoyed the artifacts we pulled for you today and
follow us on social media for more interesting and historic material from
the JPMorgan Chase Corporate History program. Thank you. Thanks for joining.
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