Stock exchanges aren’t what they used to be. You can tell just by stepping onto the floor of the most powerful one in the world, on Wall Street in New York.
At the start of the century, the New York Stock Exchange employed about 5,000 traders to execute all orders. Today, the only finance professionals who work in the landmarked space also do double duty as extras for bell-ringing ceremonies and programming on CNBC, which leases some of the space. In reality, most of the action of the NYSE, by far the world’s largest exchange measured by market value, happens at its data center across the Hudson River, in Mahwah, N.J. Data centers in New Jersey house the majority of U.S. stock trading activity today.
“The physical spaces are just television studios as almost all trading happens in data centers,” says Brad Katsuyama, CEO of The Investors Exchange (IEX), which processes trades at the CenturyLink data center in Weehawken, New Jersey.
New York isn’t the only city to decommission its trading floors; cities such as Manchester, Paris, and Vancouver have, too. After Nasdaq pioneered electronic trading in the 1970s, the so-called open outcry on most exchanges gave way to nanosecond, electronic flash trading, leaving professionals to rely on cables and speed rather than shouting within haloed neoclassical or Edwardian edifices.
Hoteliers and developers around the world have begun using these architectural showstoppers to draw in the masses to new hotels, museums, and gyms. Owners aren’t just adding a crown jewel to their portfolio, but expecting healthy returns for going through the trouble of updating the historic structures, which typically come with outdated plumbing and heating.
“From an investment perspective, introducing a new use to the exchange is a bold move but a wise one,” says Winston Zahra, chief executive officer of GG Hospitality, which opened the Stock Exchange Hotel this month in Manchester, U.K. “Trophy asset? I hate the term, but the reality is these buildings are seen as part of a city’s legacy. There is a feeling of pride.” Its penthouse has a bank vault for a closet. Gold bars serve as part of the décor and the ghosts of traders past appear in sepia-toned photographs along the walls.
Call it creative destruction. Though miles apart, each of these exchanges share a common thread. The designers and developers recasting them are abiding by capitalism’s core tenant: leaving behind the vestiges of earlier eras to welcome something new.
Here are six exchanges that are having second lives either as high-end hotels, soaring museums, or, in San Francisco, as an Equinox.
Stock Exchange Hotel, Manchester
Former Manchester United footballers Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs teamed up with Maltese hotelier Winston Zahra to restore this Edwardian edifice at a cost of £18 million ($23 million). After five years of planning and renovation work, it opened as the Stock Exchange Hotel in November—feted with a modern-day dinner party that hardly resembled the building’s inauguration in 1906 as a gentleman’s-only, top-hats-and-tails establishment.