Farmers' Loan and Trust Company

On February 28, 1822, the New York State Legislature granted a charter to the Farmers' Fire Insurance and Loan Company with capital stock of $500,000 which could be increased to $1,000,000 "when expedient".

[1] At the first meeting of the board of directors on March 9, 1822, John T. Champlin, the largest individual stockholder, was chosen president and served until his death in 1830.

The members of the executive committee of the board of directors were Moses Taylor (president of National City Bank), John Jacob Astor III, Isaac Bell Jr. (a cotton broker who was the U.S. Minister to the Netherlands), Talman, Samuel Sloan (president of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad), Edward Minturn (of Grinnell, Minturn & Co.), and Rolston.

In February 1940, the company, as trustee, purchased the Hotel Knickerbocker on West 42nd Street in Manhattan at auction for $742,500 in foreclosure proceedings against the Kerback Realty Corporation and others.

After renting office space since its inception,[a] the company purchased a plot of land in 1882 for $120,000 on William Street and built a two and a half story building which it used as its headquarters from 1889 until 1890.