A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse
September 24, 2007
Brandeis history professor Kamensky (The Colonial Mosaic
) recounts the story of Andrew Dexter, a chronically overleveraged real estate developer who engineered profound shifts in the economy and skyline of turbulent early America. Dexter built the seven-story Boston Exchange Coffee House, an extraordinarily ambitious project, and helped create a regional exchange system that made banknotes from distant rural locations acceptable in Boston. Unfortunately for his reputation, he is more often remembered as the man responsible for the first bank failure in the United States in 1809. Although he spent the last 30 years of his life on the run from numerous creditors and died in debt, he never stopped juggling visionary projects. Kamensky devotes almost as much attention to the Exchange Coffee House and its impact on contemporary thought as she does to Dexter's biography. She also weaves in an account of Nathan Appleton, born, like Dexter, in 1779, but destined for a longer and much more prosperous and respectable life fighting against Dexter and his ilk. This is a charming popular account of an often-overlooked aspect of American history. B&w photos and illus.
January 15, 2008
Kamensky (history, Brandeis Univ.; "Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England") weaves together the complicated tale surrounding Boston financial speculator Andrew Dexter Jr. (17791837). She shows Dexter as so rushed to make his fortune that he literally created his own money by printing promissory notes that he knew would be hard to redeem because they were drawn on distant banks that he controlled. With these notes, he financed the 180709 construction of the famous Exchange Coffee Housea massive combination of financial exchange, eaterie, and hotel. Dexter's scheme fell apart when local merchants determined that his banknotes were worthless and his banks insolvent. Kamensky lovingly details the Exchange building's architecture, operation, and 1818 destruction by fire. She tells of Dexter's exile, his continuing financial woes, and how he inadvertently began, through land speculation, what became Montgomery, AL. Kamensky's explanation of early banking and the dangers of undercapitalized banks is excellent, although she mixes in too much else to call this economic history. Her work is in essence a dual biography of Dexter and his Exchange building, with some fine illustrations of each. Recommended to libraries collecting on the period and especially to those in Boston and Montgomery.Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA
Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2007
Dateline Boston, November 4, 1818. Today a spectacular fire raced through Andrew Dexter Jr.s Exchange Coffee House, reducing it to ashes. Yet no lives were lost. Kamensky, historian and author, emphasizes the financial destruction that Dexter wrought in constructing the Exchange, the nations first skyscraper, a seven-story trading floor, meeting rooms, and hotel with funds generated through a clever pyramid scheme. He issued millions of dollars of worthless paper using a network of banks he controlled from the East Coast to Michigan that ultimately forced him into bankruptcy and ruined many lives. He quickly fled to Canada and years later returned south to Alabama. At the time of the fiery collapse of the Exchange, Kamensky reports many considered this divine justice for the damage Dexter caused with his speculative activities, but the author sees Dexters fate as much a result of chance as of character. This is a fascinating historical narrative of Dexter, his associates, and events surrounding the nations first bank failure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)