January 1912. Equitable fire as viewed from the Singer Building. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. An account of the fire.
Submitted by bellhalla on Sun, 09/23/2007 - 10:05am.
The article linked above kinda hints at “millions of dollars in negotiable bonds” in vaults. Try $375,000,000 worth. And $10,000,000 in cash. And that's just what belonged to the Equitable Trust Company and the Mercantile Branch of Bankers Trust. Another firm, Equitable Life Assurance, had $274,000,000 in its vaults, and August Belmont & Company, had only $150,000,000 in its vaults. (These amounts come from this New York Times article (pdf). An interesting read.)
According to spreadsheet file from this site, the $809,000,000 reported would roughly translate to $16.5 billion in 2007 dollars.
I wonder how much of that wealth was wiped out in 1929?
