| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.1

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance. By Robert E. Wright. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. vii, 210p. Figures, tables, notes, index. $25.)
The First Wall Street is an outstanding, accessible account of Philadelphia's status as the nation's first financial center. Robert Wright has written a breezy, clear, and humorous history of the city's central role as the American capital of banking and related industries. Wright has created an artful narrative to explain Philadelphia's success, leadership, and centrality in the early American economy from the early eighteenth century through the early republic. The First Wall Street also clearly explains the complex processes by which New York City overtook Philadelphia in financial importance by 1840.	1
The First Wall Street places the roots of the early republic's banking expansion in British North America. Colonial Philadelphia's economy enjoyed advantages such as a tolerant and comparably free Quaker culture, good land, and an effective General Loan Office. These advantages allowed prescient Philadelphians like Thomas Willing, Michael Hillegas, and Benjamin Franklin to create a financial dynamo in miniature, the nearest economic cousin to London on this side of the Atlantic. They created a liquid capital market and positive commercial climate with ground rents and a fledgling insurance industry that benefited wealthy merchants and middling artisans alike. To demonstrate, Wright creatively speculates on the mutual advantages of a ground rent for an average city potter (Jacob Roth) and landowner (Willing), allowing each to advance his own financial fortunes while simultaneously contributing to a stable and progressive climate for the city's business community.	. . .

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