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Old Customs House historical plaque
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2nd BANK of THE UNITED STATES
Portrait Gallery
420 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Google Maps location
FREE ADMISSION and no ticket needed
This site is part of INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK. Check their website for the most up-to-date information.
A bronze plaque, affixed to the front of the building, tells its story:
A notable example of Greek Revival architecture, this building follows in many regards Latrobe’s design of 1818. It was erected in 1819 – 1824 by his pupil, Strickland, as the Second Bank of the United States. The first of modern adaptations of the Parthenon at Athens, it was the center of the bitter financial and political struggle in which the bank’s head, Nicholas Biddle, and his ally, Henry Clay, contended with President Jackson for control of the nation’s monetary system. Jackson prevented the rechartering of the bank in 1836, and from 1845 to 1934 its former home served as the Philadelphia Custom House.
Today, the building serves as a Portrait Gallery of sculpture and paintings (mostly paintings) of 100 famous Americans of the past, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Lewis & Clark, Andrew Jackson, and so on. A few of those portraits are shown here on this web page.
One of the more interesting displays is the portrait of President Andrew Jackson adjacent to a bust of Nicholas Biddle, President of the Bank. In the 1830s, the two men battled over the bank, with Jackson wanting to shut it down and Biddle determined to keep it alive. In the end, Jackson won, but it triggered an economic downturn in the country that betrayed Jackson's ignorance of economics and led to the defeat of Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren, who was blamed for the problem, in the presidential election of 1840.
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