100 Franklin Street
Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Marker Inscription
Building erected 1909 for BOSTON SAFE DEPOST & TRUST COMPANY Last location of the Boston Stock Exchange (1834 - 2007) (etc.)
The Story
In the heart of Boston's financial district stands a stately 1909 building raised for the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company, an era when grand banking houses announced the permanence and prosperity of American finance. The building earned a second distinction as the final home of the Boston Stock Exchange, an institution that had traded since 1834 and helped fund New England's mills, railroads, and mines through the industrial age. When the exchange closed its doors in 2007, more than 170 years of regional capital markets came to a quiet end on Franklin Street.
Why it matters
The Boston Stock Exchange was one of the country's oldest regional exchanges, and this address marks where a long chapter of American financial history — the era of local markets that bankrolled the Industrial Revolution — finally closed.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1909, when this building rose on Franklin Street, Boston had long been one of the financial engines of the United States. The decades after the Civil War — the Gilded Age — poured money into New England's textile mills, its railroads, its shoe factories and mining ventures. All that industry needed capital, and Boston's banks, trust companies, and stock exchange were where much of it was raised, pooled, and put to work.
This pocket of the city, tucked among Franklin, Federal, and Congress Streets, had become Boston's financial district: a dense grid of banking houses and brokerages within walking distance of one another. A firm like the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company — the kind of institution that guarded securities, managed estates, and handled the fortunes of the region's merchant and manufacturing families — announced its solidity in stone.
The building went up in the confident architectural language of its moment. Early-twentieth-century banks favored heavy, dignified facades meant to reassure depositors that their money was as permanent as the walls around it. To stand here is to stand in the heart of the money that helped power America's industrial age.
People & events
The building carries two intertwined stories. The first belongs to the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company, which raised this structure in 1909 as its home — a place built to keep valuables secure and to serve the trust and estate business of a wealthy commercial city.
The second, and older, story is that of the Boston Stock Exchange, an institution that began trading in 1834. That founding date is remarkable: it makes the exchange one of the oldest organized securities markets in the country, born in the same generation that saw the first American railroads and the rise of the great New England mills. For much of its life, the Boston exchange specialized in the stocks that mattered most to its region — textiles, railroads, and mining among them.
In its final chapter, the exchange made this address its last home before it closed in 2007, ending a run of more than 170 years. Around that time, the pressures reshaping American finance — electronic trading and consolidation into a handful of national marketplaces — brought many of the old regional exchanges to a close. On Franklin Street, one of the longest-lived of them quietly reached its end.
Its place in the American story
For most of American history, the country did not have one single stock market — it had many. Cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and San Francisco ran their own exchanges, each closely tied to the industries and companies of its region. These local markets were how ordinary regional enterprises — a New England mill, a Western mine, a railroad line — turned into shares that investors could buy and sell.
The Boston Stock Exchange, trading since 1834, was a pillar of that decentralized financial world. Its long life traces the arc of American capitalism itself: the industrial boom of the nineteenth century, the consolidations of the twentieth, and finally the electronic, nationalized markets of our own era.
When the exchange closed in 2007, it marked more than the end of one institution. It was a small monument to the passing of an entire system — the age of local exchanges that bankrolled the Industrial Revolution, absorbed at last into the national marketplaces that dominate finance today. This unassuming address is where one of those long regional chapters came to a close.
If you visit
Come to this corner of Boston's Financial District on a weekday and it hums with the modern version of the same business that has always happened here — people moving between office towers, coffee in hand. The building itself rewards a look upward: study the weight and detail of its early-1900s facade, designed to project the permanence that banking houses of that era wanted to convey.
Think of what you're standing in front of. This was the last address of a stock exchange that had been trading since 1834 — older than most of the buildings around it, older than the transcontinental railroad. For more than a century and a half, the price of New England's mills and railroads was set by markets like the one that ended its days here.
The surrounding streets make it an easy stop on a walking tour of old Boston. From here you're a short stroll from Post Office Square, the historic financial district, and the Freedom Trail beyond — an easy way to fold a piece of America's financial history into a day of exploring the city on foot.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Griffin Museum at Digital Silver Imaging5.8 mi away
- Edmund Fowle House6.3 mi away · 26;28 Marshall Street, Watertown, MA
- Cyrus Dallin Art Museum6.4 mi away · 611 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington, MA
- Drive By Projects6.4 mi away · 81 Spring Street, Watertown, MA
- Armenian Museum of America6.6 mi away · 65 Main Street, Watertown, MA
- Smith Museum Archives6.6 mi away · 5;7 Jason Terrace, MA
Attractions
- Harvard Square3.4 mi away
- 1899 MIT Observatory site6.1 mi away
- Heartbreak Hill (Top/End)6.3 mi away
- Arlington Center Historic District6.6 mi away
- Central Street Historical District6.6 mi away
- Heartbreak Hill (Bottom/Start)6.8 mi away
Food & drink
- Lexington House of Pizza9.7 mi away
- Dunkin'10.5 mi away · 10 Woburn Street, Lexington, MA
- Formosa Taipei10.6 mi away
- Bruegger's Bagels10.6 mi away
- Spirit of India10.6 mi away
- Clay Oven10.6 mi away · 1666 Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington, MA
Places to stay
- Homewood Suites5.1 mi away · 1 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington, MA
- The Lodge at Brandeis10.4 mi away
- Hilton Garden Inn10.5 mi away · 450 Totten Pond Road, Waltham, MA
- Extended Stay America10.6 mi away · 52 Fourth Avenue
- Extended Stay America10.6 mi away · 32 Fourth Avenue
- Best Western10.6 mi away · 380 Winter Street
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
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Related events
- · Founding of the Boston Stock Exchange (1834)
- · Closure of the Boston Stock Exchange (2007)
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