Editing Buttonwood Agreement (section)

{{short description|1792 founding document of the New York Stock Exchange}}
{{other uses|Buttonwood (disambiguation)}}
[[File:Buttonwood.png|thumb|Depiction of traders under the buttonwood tree]]
[[File:Tontine coffee house.jpg|right|thumb|A 1797 painting by [[Francis Guy]]. The building with the American flag is the [[Tontine Coffee House]]. Diagonally opposite (southeast corner, extreme right)<ref>Hewitt, p. 31</ref> is the Merchant's Coffee House, where the brokers of the Buttonwood Agreement and others traded before the construction of the Tontine. On the right is [[Wall Street]], leading down to the [[East River]].]]

The '''Buttonwood Agreement''' is the founding document of what is now the [[New York Stock Exchange]] and is one of the most important financial documents in [[U.S. history]].<ref name="CNBC">{{cite news |last1=Pisani |first1=Bob |title=This single-paged document started the New York Stock Exchange 225 years ago |url=https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/17/this-single-paged-document-started-the-new-york-stock-exchange-225-years-ago.html |accessdate=7 April 2020 |work=CNBC |date=17 May 2017 |language=en}}</ref> The agreement organized [[securities trading]] in [[New York City]] and was signed on May 17, 1792 between 24 [[stockbroker]]s outside of 68 [[Wall Street]]. According to legend the signing took place under a [[platanus occidentalis|buttonwood tree]] where their earliest transactions had occurred.<ref name=SB>{{cite journal |last=Banner |first=Stuart |author-link=Stuart Banner |title=The Origin of the New York Stock Exchange, 1791–1860 |journal=[[The Journal of Legal Studies]] |date=January 1998 |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=113–140 |doi=10.1086/468015 |publisher=[[The University of Chicago Press]] |jstor=10.1086/468015 }}</ref>  The New York Stock Exchange celebrates the signing of this agreement on May 17, 1792 as its founding.<ref name="CNBC" />