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 The Green B 3g Volume itx'ii if June, 1910

Number (3

The Oldest Law Publishing House in the United States WHAT is without doubt the oldest law publishing business in the United States was established when. in ISO-l, David Banks, a regular practi tioner in the courts of New York State, acted on the advice of prominent Judges and founded a distinctively American house for the manufacture and sale of law books. Before that time, law books were scarce and expensive. Only the most prosperous lawyers could afford anything like a respectable working library. Books had been imported, or

printed here and there in small quan tities by various ﬁrms by oﬁicial order or by popular subscription, but this state of things was not satisfactory to the profession. It was at the sugges

tion of the Judges of the Old Court of

being known as Gould & Banks. After doing business several years under that name, they formed the ﬁrm of Banks.

Gould & Co., in New York, and Gould, Banks & Co., in Albany, N. Y. Mr. Banks, the founder of the house,

was a man of strong and attractive personality, an uncompromising "hard shell Democrat," who possessed the friendship of eminent men of his time and was often urged to accept nomina tions for public oﬂ‘ice, never caring to accept any, however, except that of Alderman. ‘Whenever he ran for this oﬁice he was elected, even the Vhigs voting for him, and he served as Presi

dent of the Board when that signiﬁed a far greater honor than it would now. They presented him with a handsome silver pitcher when President of the

Chancery and of the Court of Error that Mr. Banks turned aside from the prac~ tice of law to take up a business which in course of time reached unprecedented proportions, and to which he devoted himself with great assiduity. The beginning was a modest one, in a shop on the corner of Broad and Wall .streets in New York City, where the Drexel Building and offices of J. P. Morgan & Co. are now located, another

sturdy ﬁghter David Banks, who crossed the Delaware with George Washington and fought with him in all the battles of the Revolution, the second David Banks showed similar ardor and energy

shop being opened about the same time

in his intense devotion to his business,

in Albany.

which was soon printing more law books than any other concern in the world.

At that time, strange though

it seem, Wall street was an uptown resi dential thoroughfare. Mr. Banks took William Gould in partnership, the ﬁrm

Board of Aldermen. for opening Chapel street, now West Broadway. He lived to be eighty-ﬁve years old, retaining the use of his mental faculties unim

paired to the last.

The son of that

After twenty-ﬁve years the building on Wall street was found too small. and