Merchants' Exchange Building

About this museum

At the corner where Dock, Third, and Walnut Streets converge in Philadelphia's Old City neighborhood, the Merchants' Exchange Building commands its triangular site with the cool authority of a building that has always known it is exceptional. Designed by William Strickland and built between 1832 and 1834, the Exchange is a masterwork of Greek Revival architecture - the first distinctly American national style - and one of Strickland's finest achievements in a city full of them. Its curved Corinthian colonnade, inspired by the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, gives the building an elegance that stops pedestrians on Dock Street even today. When it opened, the Exchange was the center of Philadelphia's commercial universe: a brokerage house where merchants gathered to trade commodities, ship cargoes, and conduct the business of a city that was still one of America's great commercial and financial capitals. By 1875, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange had superseded it, and the building passed through various uses before coming under the care of the National Park Service as part of Independence National Historical Park. Today it is preserved as a historic site that visitors can explore as part of their engagement with Philadelphia's extraordinary concentration of revolutionary - era and early - republican buildings. The Merchants' Exchange is free to visit as part of Independence National Historical Park. The National Park Service maintains the building and provides information for visitors at nps.gov/inde. Located at 143 South 3rd Street, it is steps from Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and Carpenters' Hall - making it a natural part of any walking tour of Old City Philadelphia.