From Buttonwood to Buttoned Down

NEW YORK — A new stamp was issued and a sycamore sapling was planted to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the New York Stock Exchange on Sunday.

It was on May 17, 1792, that 24 men who traded stocks and bonds signed an agreement to charge fixed commission rates and adhere to fair trade practices.

The pact was called the Buttonwood Agreement because it was signed beneath a buttonwood tree--now known as a sycamore--in Manhattan near the present-day Wall Street.

A newly planted sycamore tree stands in front of the stock exchange to mark the event.

The 29-cent commemorative stamp, designed to look like a stock certificate, bears one drawing of the stately columned stock exchange building and another of traders with computer screens.

The ceremony marking the issuance of the stamp took place across the street from the exchange at Federal Hall, the nation’s first capitol.

The capital was moved to Washington two years before the Buttonwood Agreement as part of a compromise hammered out by the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton had proposed that the federal government sell $80 million in bonds to pay off Revolutionary War debt.

Southern congressmen opposed Hamilton’s plan but agreed to it in exchange for having the capital moved south.