The Produce Exchange sold off its building for development in the 1950s; the headquarters was demolished to make way for a skyscraper called 2 Broadway.

[5][6] The Corn Exchange combined four buildings on Broad and South Streets to make an L-shaped gathering room.

[1][10][11] The New York Produce Exchange Company was founded in 1860 to construct a building on the block bounded by Whitehall, Moore, Pearl, and Water Streets.

[13][15] The design of the building, with its top story in a cruciform shape, was described by architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler as "a very effective transeptual arrangement".

[8][24] Afterward, the Produce Exchange renovated the interior, adding space to accommodate the increased membership and converting the basement into a full story.

[1][32] The New-York Tribune characterized it the following year as "insufficiently lighted, poorly ventilated, and generally damp", with its basement prone to flooding during high tides.

The site-selection committee recommended that the building be south of Exchange Place, east of Broadway, and west of William Street.

[38][b] The exchange ultimately acquired land along the eastern side of Bowling Green, between Beaver and Stone Streets, in mid-1880[11][13] for $670,000.

[41][42][43] In October 1880, some members of the exchange formed a new building committee and invited ten architects to an architectural design competition.

[46][47][48] The members of the exchange requested further guidance from the building committee a week before the formal vote was to be held in March 1881.

The committee suggested a design entitled In me mea spes omnis, which The New York Times inferred was a submission by George B.

[13] Exchange members overwhelmingly voted for Post's plan, with 942 in favor of that design, compared to 249 for the other three proposals combined.

[57][58] At ground level on the western, northern, and southern sides, the entrances consisted of triple arches between sets of paired columns.

[2][64] The underlying ground contained several layers of quicksand, requiring the structure to be built upon over 15,000 pilings made of spruce and pine.

[73][74] The outer walls were made of load-bearing masonry, consisting of piers that were outwardly clad with granite on the lower stories and brick above.

[59][88] After the building's completion, German diplomat Karl Hinckeldeyn wrote that he believed the Produce Exchange to be comparable to the Roman Palazzo Farnese.

[74] An unnamed critic for the Real Estate Record and Guide called the tower was "purely monumental" and inappropriately placed at the rear of the building, "as if one were to lavish all the decoration of his house upon the kitchen door".

[62][92] Another writer, Mariana Van Rennselaer, had a mixed opinion of the structure, calling the tower "utterly superfluous and disturbing"[88][93][94] but describing the design beneath the cornice as "very fine in general proportion".

[101][102] Harper's New Monthly Magazine, describing the business of the Produce Exchange in 1886, characterized the trading as "callithumpian discord" with "fiendish screeches".

[54][103] According to the exchange's president in 1911, the exchange floor handled commodities such as "wheat, corn, rye, oats, barley and other grains, flour, meal, hops, hay, straw, seeds, pork, lard, all sorts of meat food products, tallow, greases, cotton-seed oil and various other animal and vegetable oils, naval stores of all kinds, butter, [and] cheese".

[34] Warehouse receipts of provisions at the Produce Exchange were typically executed in groups of 250 barrels, each weighing 200 pounds (91 kg).

[107] One author wrote of the exchange itself in 1884, "From comparatively small beginnings it has reached a position of prominence, power, and usefulness in the community little dreamt of twenty years ago.

[120] By then, the Produce Exchange had come to see its headquarters as excessively large, considering the NYSE was easily able to fit within the space.

[106] Two years later, the Produce Exchange appointed a committee to study the possibility of demolishing its headquarters, although nothing occurred at that time.

[141] After the original plan failed, the Produce Exchange negotiated with the Charles F. Noyes Company, which took over the development project in 1956.

[142] As part of an agreement with the Noyes Company, the exchange was allowed to retain ownership of the land under the new building.

[144] In January 1957, the Produce Exchange sold the furnishings inside its Bowling Green headquarters[145] and moved to temporary quarters at 42 Broadway.

[148][149] Produce Exchange officials retrieved the old cornerstone that June and found its contents still intact, including coins, jars of commodities, books, and a newspaper.

[150][151] None of the decorative terracotta ornament was preserved, a circumstance characterized by authors Sarah Landau and Carl W. Condit as seemingly "unforgivably venal".

[162][163] The liquidation came following a dispute between the PERT and Olympia and York, which owned 2 Broadway and objected to a proposed raise of the land lease.