Pittsburgh Stock Exchange
From 1903 to 1963, members of the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange bought shares of regional and national companies in this building. The two-story Neoclassical structure with its high-ceilinged main hall was originally built for Mechanics National Bank. When that institution was absorbed in a merger, the exchange sold 30 new memberships at $10,000 each to buy the building.
The stock exchange here traced its origins to the birth of the petroleum industry in western Pennsylvania. While Cleveland, home of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, soon surpassed Pittsburgh in refinery production, the city remained a major oil trading center for decades. Exchanges set up for trading oil futures and options evolved to selling stocks and bonds for the region’s many industries.
Annual trading topped 3 million shares in 1900, trailing only New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Volumes continued to rise until the 1929 stock market crash. Eventually regional stock exchanges were phased out. Pittsburgh's moved up the street in 1963 and closed the following decade, and the building that stood here was demolished.
Henry Long
The son of a Pittsburgh steamboat outfitter, Long was a schoolboy during the Great Fire of 1845 and helped out by serving coffee to the firefighters. As a young man he was a riverboat trader on the Upper Mississippi. When the first oil wells were drilled north of Pittsburgh, Long came home and set up a refinery on Saw Mill Run to manufacture Lucifer brand lamp oil.
He and other refiners and traders formed the Pittsburgh Petroleum Association in 1867, and Long became president, lobbying for tax reductions and setting rules for commodity trading. The influential industrialist also had interests in iron and steel, was owner and editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette newspaper. served on Allegheny city council as president, and was elected to Harrisburg, where he became speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Long was also a stockbroker, and when the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange was organized in 1894, he became its first president.
