The phrase curbstone broker, curb-stone broker or curb broker refers to a broker who conducts trading on the literal curbs of a financial district. Such brokers were prevalent in the 1800s and early 1900s, and the most famous curb market existed on Broad Street in the financial district of Manhattan. Curbstone brokers often traded stocks that were speculative in nature, as well as stocks in small industrial companies such as iron, textiles and chemicals. Efforts to organize and standardize the market started early in the 20th century under notable curb-stone brokers such as Emanuel S. Mendels.
Curb brokers in Wall Street in 1920, a year before much of the trading was moved into a dedicated exchange building. That year, journalist Edwin C. Hill described the curb trading on lower Broad Street as "a roaring, swirling whirlpool... like nothing else under the astonishing sky that is its only roof."
Stock trading on the New York Curb Association market on Broad Street circa 1916, with brokers and clients signalling from street to offices. Many members used flamboyant hand signals to conduct trades.
Curb market at Broad Street 1902. Wrote a local resident in 1907, each morning at 10 o'clock the "multitude" of "brokers, brokers' clerks, lemonade and provision vendors, messenger boys, 'lambs' awaiting slaughter, and numerous other attaches and camp followers of the noisy and disorderly throng breaks forth with a volley of discordant screams which rend the air for several blocks, and then bedlam reigns until the gong again sounds at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, to the confusion and discomfort of the whole surrounding neighborhood."
Broad Street and Curb Brokers, circa 1909.
Broad Street is a north–south street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Originally the Broad Canal in New Amsterdam, it stretches from today's South Street to Wall Street.
The New York Stock Exchange Building (right) at Broad and Wall Streets
Heere Gracht (later Broad Street) and Fish Bridge in New Amsterdam, 1659
Old Dutch house on Broad Street, 1831
Explosion of a warehouse on Broad Street during the Great New York City Fire of 1845, July 19, 1845