Fidelity Trust Company was a bank in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . Founded in 1866 as Fidelity Insurance, Trust, & Safe Deposit Company , the bank was later renamed Fidelity Trust Company , Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company , The Fidelity Bank , and Fidelity Bank, National Association . It was absorbed in 1988 in the biggest U.S. bank merger up to that point, and is today part of Wells Fargo .
31-543: It was founded in 1866 by financier Clarence H. Clark (1833–1906) and several partners as the Fidelity Insurance, Trust, & Safe Deposit Company with initial capital of $ 250,000. Besides selling insurance and transacting trust business, the company was the second U.S. bank to offer safe deposit services. The bank was located at Broad and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia. The Chestnut Street building
62-406: A private art gallery and a $ 27,000 library that held a large collection of books, meticulously catalogued in two volumes. The parklike grounds, which occupied a full city block on the southwest corner of 42nd Street, were open to the public, and included a fine collection of plants, including "a rare Chinese jinko tree, the first to be brought to America." (Chestnutwold would be torn down in 1916 by
93-411: A cost of $ 300,000, included "hardwood floors; hand-carved mahogany paneling, six feet high around the rooms; stained glass windows, said by art dealers to be matchless"; wallpaper "hand painted by a Japanese"; an $ 1,800 chandelier, a $ 2,000 mantelpiece, mosaic tiling, radiant heat from hot water piped under the floors, a hydraulic elevator, and "secret vaults for the treasures of silver plate." It also had
124-574: A degree in manufacturing in 1901 and worked as an ambulance driver during World War I. Enoch White Clark Enoch White Clark (November 16, 1802 – August 4, 1856) was the founder of E. W. Clark & Co. , a prominent financial firm based in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , that helped the U.S. government finance the Mexican–American War . In 1857, Clark was listed as one of Philadelphia's 25 millionaires. Clark also launched
155-542: A developer, Clark took the rowhouse form that was becoming the standard dwelling and altered it by moving the buildings some 20 feet back from the street on their lots. His first example is the 4000 block of Locust Street. In 1862, Clark helped found the Union League of Philadelphia, a patriotic society that survives today as a city club . By the end of the American Civil War , Clark was president of
186-419: A lawyer and landowner who had developed West Philly's first residential blocks in the 1850s. Among his partners in development were William S. Kimball and a man named McKlosky. At one point, he owned "the ground from 42nd to 43rd Street, Walnut to Pine". He moved to West Philly in the early 1860s, and built a 34-room mansion named Chestnutwold at 4200 Locust Street. The three-story brownstone mansion, built at
217-827: A member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia . In 1876, Clark helped found the Centennial National Bank , chartered on January 19 to be the “financial agent of the board at the Centennial Exhibition , receiving and accounting for daily receipts, changing foreign moneys into current funds, etc.", according to a January 22 piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer . The bank commissioned architect Frank Furness to design its headquarters building , which opened in April on
248-521: A merchant and miller who married Mary White (1777-?) on February 11, 1802. Enoch Clark got his start in finance by working as an office boy at S. & M. Allen & Company, a prominent Philadelphia bank. In 1823, he was made a partner of a new branch of the bank in Providence, Rhode Island . On February 1, 1826, Clark married Sarah Crawford Dodge (1806-1878), a daughter of Nehemiah Dodge. (After she died, her son Edward White Clark commissioned
279-822: A seat on the board of directors. Other deals landed him seats on the boards of the New York, Buffalo, and Philadelphia Railroad and the Railroad Equipment Company. In 1889, Clark was elected to the American Philosophical Society . He was an active Unitarian . He was a member of several clubs, including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society , of which he served as 14th president; the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania , and
310-562: A stained-glass window in her memory in the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia . ) In 1832, Clark launched his own bank in Boston, Massachusetts ; it failed four years later, whereupon he headed back to Philadelphia. In 1837, he created the E. W. Clark & Co. financial house with his two brothers, Luther Clapp Clark (July 4, 1815 - 1877) and Joseph Washington Clark (1810-1892); and brother-in-law, Edward Dodge. It
341-621: The Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company Building , it is today listed on the National Register of Historic Places . This building portrayed the headquarters of Duke & Duke in the film Trading Places . From 1950 to 1966, the bank's president was Howard C. Petersen (1911-1996), who went on to be its CEO until 1975 and chairman until 1978. In 1956, the bank acquired Farmers National Bank of Bucks County and Roosevelt Bank In 1968,
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#1732793895647372-643: The Titanic survivors, Thomas D.M. Cardeza , was a grandson of Fidelity co-founder Thomas Drake and would go on to be a director of the company from 1922 to 1951. In 1926, the bank merged with the Philadelphia Trust Company, established in 1869, to become the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company . In 1928, the bank erected a 29-story headquarters building at 123-151 South Broad Street in Philadelphia. Called
403-572: The Walnut Street West branch of the Philadelphia Free Library . Clark died at Chestnutwold on March 6, 1906. Clark married Amie Hampton Wescott and they had at least one son, Clarence Howard Clark Jr. ; Amie died in 1870 during childbirth. In 1873, he married Marie Motley Davis, a resident of Boston and niece of author John Lothrop Motley . They had a son, Charles Motley Clark, who graduated from Harvard with
434-653: The 1836 revocation of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States and the Panic of 1837 . Moody's magazine, a monthly publication of the Moody's credit rating agency , later wrote: During the first ten years of its development the firm gained wide recognition and public confidence, owing to the indomitable energy of Enoch W. Clark. The drafts of this house drawn between the various branches, were regarded as
465-756: The Bibliophile Society of Boston. In 1894, when the Free Library of Philadelphia created a board of trustees, Clark was on the first board. That same year, the city government established a board to promote and create museums, and Clark was on it, too. In 1899, he was a Life Member (City Division) of the Fairmount Park Art Association , and served on its Standing Committee on Works of Art and its Standing Committee on Smith Memorial . He donated several acres of land that became West Philadelphia's Clark Park , and land for
496-600: The Fidelity Trust Company in 1886, it had by 1921 achieved "a foremost place among the trust companies of the country." It was reported to hold more than $ 255 million in trust funds and $ 829 million in corporate trusts. In the early years of the 20th century, Fidelity underwrote International Mercantile Marine , the parent company of the White Star Line . The 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic caused large losses at Fidelity and forced layoffs. One of
527-677: The Philadelphia Wrecking and Contracting Company. It would be replaced 10 years later by the Episcopal Divinity School, which was built in 1926. ) His was not the only millionaire's house set among what one historian called a "crazy quilt of farms and estates, crisscrossed by free-running creeks"; the Drexels owned several houses at 39th and Locust and the Potts family had a brick mansion at 3905 Spruce. As
558-656: The bank was renamed The Fidelity Bank . In 1970, the bank's headquarters moved to 1200 East Lancaster Avenue in Rosemont, Pennsylvania . From 1971 to 1978, the bank's president was Samuel H. Ballam Jr. (1919-2003), a 42-year employee of the bank. In 1984, the bank was renamed Fidelity Bank, National Association and its headquarters moved to 2 County View Road in Rosemont. In 1985, the headquarters moved to 14 Great Valley Parkway in Malvern, Pennsylvania , and in 1990, back to
589-456: The boy's looks and he gave him a job. Cooke was assigned to the clerical department where his devotion to his work and his exceptional abilities in financial matters caused Mr. Clark to push him along," a 1914 history of the firm recounted. At the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), the U.S. government borrowed about $ 50 million (about $ 1,695,555,556 today ) from the firm, then recognized as "the leading domestic exchange house" in
620-429: The chartered First National Bank , the first bank to issue federal banknotes. Clark signed the first one. In 1866, he and some partners chartered the Fidelity Insurance, Trust & Safe Deposit Co. , which later became Fidelity Trust Company and Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Co., then was absorbed into First Fidelity, First Union, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo. In 1867, he, along with his brothers Edward and Frank, became
651-483: The country. In 1849, Enoch's oldest son, Edward White Clark , became a member of the firm. That same year, Cooke was made a partner. (Cooke retired from the firm in 1854, and went on to help to sell the bonds that financed the U.S. Civil War and push the cash-strapped American government to form a true national currency.) Enoch Clark "withdrew from the really active management" of his firm in 1850. He died on August 4, 1856, of nicotine poisoning . Enoch W. Clark
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#1732793895647682-572: The debts in seven years, then to propel the Clarks to a place among the city's wealthiest families. The firm opened branches in New York, St. Louis, and New Orleans, and made considerable money performing domestic exchanges in the wake of the 1836 revocation of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States and the Panic of 1837 . The elder Clark died in 1856 of complications of nicotine poisoning. The firm went on to control many public utility and railroad properties. In 1854, Clarence Clark joined
713-456: The family firm. The firm was dissolved on December 31, 1857, and reformed the following day with these partners: Clark, his older brother Edward White Clark , Frederick J. Kimball , and H. H. Wainwright . Clark was instrumental in developing West Philadelphia , which was transformed over the 19th century from an area of farmland and light industry to a streetcar suburb . Clark bought land from various sellers, including Nathaniel B. Browne ,
744-868: The financial career of Jay Cooke , who helped finance the Union's war effort in the Civil War and establish a true national currency. Clark was born in November 16, 1802, in Easthampton, Massachusetts , a descendant of Captain William Clark (1609–1690), who emigrated from England aboard the ship Mary and John and landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts , in 1630, and moved to the town of Easthampton in 1639. Enoch traced his descent from William as follows: John (1651-1704), John (1679-1768), Eliakim (1707-1781), Lt. Asahel (1737-1822), to his father, Bohan (1772-1846),
775-453: The original location at Broad and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia. In the 1970s, the company established a holding company named Fidelcor to operate Fidelity Bank as its main subsidiary. In 1988, Fidelcor was merged into First Fidelity, a growing New Jersey bank. The $ 1.34 billion deal, the largest bank merger up to that time, turned First Fidelity into a regional powerhouse and one of the nation's 25 largest banks. In 1996, First Fidelity
806-613: The southeast corner of Market Street and 32nd Street, across from the Pennsylvania Railroad station. A branch office operated during the Centennial on the fairgrounds. Among other activities, the bank financed various West Philly development efforts. In 1881, Clark helped E.W. Clark and Co. acquire the 11-year-old Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad , renaming it the Norfolk & Western Railway and taking
837-517: The very best circulating medium in the West. There were more than $ 2,000,000 worth of these drafts in circulation within a short time after the establishment of the western branch offices and they were considered everywhere as the equivalent of gold. Along the way, Clark hired a clerk who would one day shape the American financial system: 16-year-old Jay Cooke of Sandusky, Ohio . "Enoch W. Clark liked
868-403: Was absorbed into First Union , which in 2001 merged with Wachovia , which was acquired by Wells Fargo in 2008. Clarence Howard Clark Sr. Clarence Howard Clark Sr. (April 19, 1833 – 1906) was a banker , land owner, and developer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . Ten years after his death, The New York Times called him one of the city's "most prominent men of his day." Clark
899-473: Was born in Providence, Rhode Island , on April 19, 1833, to Sarah Crawford Dodge and Enoch White Clark . The family moved to Boston that same year, where Enoch, a financier, incurred substantial debts. They then moved to Philadelphia in January 1837, where Enoch and his brother-in-law, Edward Dodge, founded the banking firm E. W. Clark & Co. later that year. That firm did well, earning enough to pay off
930-470: Was described as a "general banking, commission, and exchange business." Clark's Philadelphia firm did well, earning enough to pay off his debts in seven years, then to propel the Clarks to a place among the city's wealthiest families. The firm opened branches in New York City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Burlington, Iowa , and made considerable money performing domestic exchanges in the wake of
961-404: Was designed by G. W. & W. D. Hewitt - Architects, Frederick S. Holmes - Vault Engineer, and Damon Safe & Iron Works Co. - Vault Builder. Clark served as the bank's first president, followed by Nathaniel B. Browne , Stephen Caldwell, John B. Gest (1824–1907), Rudolph Ellis (1837-1915, served as FTC president 1900–1915), and William P. Gest (1861-1939, served 1919(?)–1926). Renamed