buildings in Lower Manhattan, all the structures in that locale were thought to have burned to the ground as well.
The sole survivor – unobtrusive at a mere two-stories amidst the charred rubble of so many larger structures -- turned out to be the brick colonial style building which the tavern currently occupies. In the great chaos after the fire, however, this pertinent fact was never documented by the newly formed and inexperienced NYC Buildings Department. And the towering replacement structures hastily erected higgledy-piggledy around it during the ensuing years soon obscured its modest footprint.
As far as today’s City Hall bureaucrats are concerned then, the Bull & Bear Tavern has no address and doesn’t exist although a number of them drink there every night. This suits the owner, Hilda Gluckmeister, just fine since she prefers to fly under the radar whenever possible.
Finding the bar can be difficult for strangers to the Financial District. There are no flashy neon signs out front, not even a tiny brass nameplate announcing its presence in the alley. A person with a huge thirst, feverishly searching for the upscale watering hole, has to know exactly where it is located; which also suits the owner just fine since Hilda doesn't want tourists in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops on low-budget tours mobbing the place. To this end, she pays the Association of Travel Agents an annual stipend to not include the Bull & Bear on its New York list of hotspots. Hilda isn’t xenophobic and welcomes tourists, however, she only likes the well-heeled, free-spending variety.
Once you enter the vestibule of the tavern you immediately realize that you’re in the correct place because directly under the impressive Viennese crystal chandelier there are two bronze statues -- a Bull and a Bear -- to greet you. Each is four feet high and mounted on pedestals facing one another as if they are about to do battle. The custom is for new arrivals to rub the bull’s right front hoof for good luck. Since Wall Street people are a very superstitious clan by nature, the bull’s hoof has developed a golden sheen from being touched by so many oily human hands over the years.
It is a mystery how the Bull and the Bear became metaphors for boom-and-bust Wall Street, the upward and downward stock market trends. Many traders will tell you that it dates to 1714 and it’s because bulls thrust upward with their horns when fighting whereas bears swipe downward with their paws. If you ask Hilda about it, she will tell you she hasn’t the remotest idea how the fighting styles of these two animals came to symbolize market movements. If you press her hard, she’ll tell you that the metaphors are just so much bullshit.
The bar was opened in 1919 by Hilda's grandfather, a poor Austrian immigrant and cagey extrovert by the name of Fritz Gluckmeister. It occupies the premises of a former private bank that went belly-up as a consequence of unwisely speculating in Russian securities which became worthless after the Tsar was executed and the Bolsheviks seized power at the tail end of World War I.
The original, massive steel underground vault, ten inches thick and impervious to both dynamite and artillery shells, once stored the gold bullion reserves of several small South American countries and is still intact. Today, it serves as a discrete dining room for Wall Street players who don't want their competitors or the SEC to discover the modern-day shenanigans they are up to.
The rumor mill has it that Fritz, a lowly waiter in a sausage bar and beer hall up in Yorkville at the time, was bankrolled by the infamous Charles Ponzi, his silent partner. Ponzi had immigrated to this country from Italy in 1903 with only $2.50 to his name and a fierce determination to become filthy rich; no matter what. He promised people a 50% return on their investment within 45 days and was destined go down in the history books as the ingenious inventor of the classic Ponzi Scheme; a financial fraud which resulted in many thousands of mom and pop investors being bilked out of $7.0 million dollars of their hard-earned savings in 1920. This was a hell of a lot of money in those days when you consider that a tall stein of ice-cold beer in a saloon cost only a nickel.
It is interesting to note that one of Charles Ponzi's present-day acolytes, Bernard Madoff, the modern bogeyman of American finance, orchestrated an identical, but much larger rip-off of investors to the tune of $15 billion, give or take a few billion. This only goes to show you that a truly clever, really evil scam never dies and easily withstands the rigorous tests of time.
The irate creditors of Ponzi sued Fritz in Federal court, claiming that stolen funds had been used to finance the opening of the Bull & Bear. Nothing could ever be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, however, and Fritz, like so many other guilty defendants, walked away a free man.
His defense attorney for the trial was Tommy 'Silky' Callahan, a devious criminal lawyer and master of New York’s legal labyrinth, with a one-man law office on Maiden Lane. Callahan was suspected by the NYPD of engaging in jury tampering when the stakes were high enough in a case. Again, nothing could ever be proved conclusively, so, he too, walked free of all charges.
Callahan lived to 102; fabulously rich, supremely contented, and quietly enjoying the fruits of his ill-gotten gains, delighting in the best of what the world had to offer – French champagne, steaks from Delmonico’s, Russian caviar, fast European cars, and equally fast Asian women – up in his sumptuous Park Avenue apartment. It seems only fitting that Callahan's grandson, Thomas Callahan, III, a former General Partner at Kuhn, Loeb & Co., remains to this day a faithful customer of the Bull & Bear.
Fritz operated the tavern as a speakeasy after the Temperance Movement foisted Prohibition on the country in 1920. Thanks to a peephole in the door and making outsized payoffs to the local police precinct house, business boomed. When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression reared its ugly head, he had accumulated sufficient illegal profits to weather the storm during the desperately hard decade of the 1930s. National prosperity eventually returned with the start of World War II and the Bull & Bear became a veritable gold mine as Wall Street entered an era of unparalleled profitability.
Rumor also has it that a stout and argumentative ex-politician by the name of Winston Churchill often dropped by the Bull & Bear for drinks in the late 1940's while on lecture tours. Almost penniless at the time, this lion of a man had been reduced to giving public speeches for pocket change in order to put food on the table for his family after the ungrateful British voters back home kicked him out of 10 Downing Street as a thank-you for having saved the country from Adolph Hitler.
The coincidence that Hilda's pet dog happens to be an English Bulldog, and also answers to the name of Winston, lends much credence to this rumor. Hilda remains cagey when queried about the matter, however, and will neither confirm nor deny the story.
In the suburbs, business deals are often consummated on exclusive golf courses in-between holes. The island of Manhattan doesn’t have any golf courses, exclusive or otherwise, so business deals here are generally concluded in-between drinks, frequently in upscale watering holes near Wall Street such as the Bull & Bear Tavern.
The clientele today is comprised mostly of stock analysts, brokers, portfolio managers, financial advisors, traders, underwriters, venture capitalists, mergers & acquisition specialists, and private equity investors. Some of them are glitterati, household names in their professions, renowned far and wide throughout the grandiose capitals of Europe and Asia as mavens and stock market seers. The vast majority of the bar’s customers, however, aren’t well-known wheeler-dealers at all; instead they are mid-level cogs in the great financial colossus called Wall Street.
It makes no difference to Hilda what a person’s status in the world of business may be; she treats all customers the same; that is, if you check your testosterone at the door and conduct yourself with decorum, you will be treated as royalty. Start trouble, however, and big-shot or not, the burly Russian bouncers will toss you out the front door on your ear faster than you can say:
SELL IN MAY AND GO AWAY!
The
