e was based
on the plan introduced into France in 1653 by Lorenzo Tonti, with slight
variations. According to the New York Tontine plan, each holder's share
reverted automatically to the surviving shareholders in the association,
instead of to his heirs. There were 157 original shareholders, and 203
shares of stock valued at L200 each.

[Illustration: NIBLO'S GARDEN, BROADWAY AND PRINCE STREET, 1828]

The directors bought the house and lot on the northwest corner of Wall
and Water Streets, where the original Merchants coffee house stood,
paying L1,970. They next acquired the adjoining lots on Wall and Water
Streets, paying L2,510 for the former, and L1,000 for the latter.

The cornerstone of the new coffee house was laid June 5, 1792; and a
year later to the day, 120 gentlemen sat down to a banquet in the
completed coffee house to celebrate the event of the year before. John
Hyde was the first landlord. The house had cost $43,000.

[Illustration: COFFEE RELICS OF DUTCH NEW YORK

Spice-grinder boat, coffee roaster, and coffee pots at the Van Cortlandt
Museum]

A contemporary account of how the Tontine coffee house looked in 1794 is
supplied by an Englishman visiting New York at the time:

The Tontine tavern and coffee house is a handsome large brick
building; you ascend six or eight steps under a portico, into a
large public room, which is the Stock Exchange of New York, where
all bargains are made. Here are two books kept, as at Lloyd's [in
London] of every ship's arrival and clearance. This house was built
for the accommodation of the merchants by Tontine shares of two
hundred pounds each. It is kept by Mr. Hyde, formerly a woolen
draper in London. You can lodge and board there at a common table,
and you pay ten shillings currency a day, whether you dine out or
not.

[Illustration: NEW YORK'S VAUXHALL GARDEN OF 1803

From an old print]

The stock market made its headquarters in the Tontine coffee house in
1817, and the early organization was elaborated and became the New York
Stock and Exchange Board. It was removed in 1827 to the Merchants
Exchange Building, where it remained until that place was destroyed by
fire in 1835.

It was stipulated in the original articles of the Tontine Association
that the house was to be kept and used as a coffee house, and this
agreement was adhered to up to the year 1834, when, by permission of the
Court of Chancery, the pr