“Bulls of Wall Street,” a New Exhibition on 19th-century Finance

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will open a new exhibition titled, Bulls of Wall Street: High Finance, Power, and Social Change in Victorian America. 

With rare and never-before-seen period artifacts, photos, documents, and costumes from public and private collections, this exhibition curated by Museum Consultant Stacey Danielson will explore the financial world of LeGrand Lockwood, one of America’s leading figures in 19^th-century American finance, and his peers—Vanderbilt and Gould. This program will also investigate the role of trailblazing women such as Victoria Woodhull and Hetty Green, as well as individuals from marginalized communities such as the first black millionaire in America, Jeremiah Hamilton, who tried to break Wall Street’s “glass ceiling” and enter the world of finance and the market in 19th-century America.

Visitors will also delve into the birth of Wall Street, its financial instruments, and scientific breakthroughs that modernized and accelerated the exchange of information, making Wall Street the new economic engine, and propelling “self-made men” to new heights of prosperity.