and former broker at Gerstley, Sunstein & Co., to buy Granbery, Marache around this time. A New York native, Lifton graduated from the Baruch School of the City College of New York and Yale Law School. He made his name in real estate syndication and as an entrepreneur. Jay Pritzker, who was the son of a prominent Chicago lawyer, was also a successful entrepreneur and the founder of the Hyatt Hotel chain.
Although the new owners do not appear to have had ties to the original Blair firm, in many ways, their investment signified a return to the entrepreneurial model of the first Blair partnership and the acquisition of the firm by A. O. Stewart during the Great Depression. According to Lifton, he, Pritzker and others bought the firm, after which they installed Lendman as the head. When Blair & Co., Granbery, Marache, Inc. celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1965, Marache Sr. became president emeritus and was succeeded by William M. Lendman.
Merger announcement introducing Blair & Co., Granbery, Marache, which was published in The Morning News( Wilmington, DE) on November 4, 1963.
In 1966, during Lendman’ s tenure, the firm changed its name back to Blair & Co., Inc., the third time in its history that it reverted back to its original name. By 1967, the firm had grown to 25 offices. The following year, during the height of the paperwork crisis on Wall Street, Blair began to acquire the offices of troubled firms. In December 1968, Blair & Co. took over the 15 offices of Schwabacher & Co., a San Francisco brokerage house that was reorganized as Blair’ s West Coast division. At that time, Blair restructured and created an“ office of the president.” In addition to Lendman, the other president was James Basil Ramsey Jr., a Tennessee native whose father was a bank president.
Then, within a very short period of time, Blair & Co. ran into trouble. During the bear market that followed the paperwork crisis on Wall Street, Blair & Co. found itself short of capital, reportedly experiencing operating difficulties created by the Schwabacher & Co. merger as well. According to Robert K. Lifton, Lendman was still at the firm when the officers“ concluded that the company should discontinue operations because success required that the New York Stock Exchange reach a trading volume that they thought was not attainable.” Newspaper reports indicate that Lendman resigned from the firm in 1969, and Ramsey Jr. was elected president and CEO. Vanderbilt remained chairman of the board, but he left in 1970.
By August 1970, Blair & Co. sold 14 of its offices to Thomson & McKinnon Auchincloss, Inc. in a distress sale, including the western branches acquired in the Schwabacher & Co. merger. The New York Times reported that Blair’ s problems were“ believed to be among the worst on Wall Street.” Ramsey Jr. joined Thomson McKinnon Securities as senior vice president.
In a relatively short period of time, the financial position of the Blair firm became irreparably compromised, and the firm shut down. In what the Associated Press called a“ traumatic year for [ the ] stock market,” Blair & Co. became one of“ a number of brokerage firms [ that ] had dissolved, liquidated or were in the process of liquidating.” According to the Courier- Post,“ Blair had 29,000 customer accounts on its books when the New York Stock Exchange stepped in to liquidate it [ in September 1970 ].” With the liquidation, the history of Blair & Co. came to an end.
Susie J. Pak is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at St. John’ s University( New York). A graduate of Dartmouth College and Cornell University, she is the author of Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J. P. Morgan( Harvard University Press), a Trustee of the Business History Conference, co-chair of the Columbia University Economic History Seminar and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Business History Review. She is also a member of the Financial History editorial board.
Editor’ s note: Special thanks to Jeanette Iurato, curator of the Blairstown Museum( www. blairstownmuseum. com) in Blairstown, New Jersey, for her assistance with this article.
34 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring 2018 | www. MoAF. org