When Stocks Came in From the Cold

A The Greenwich Street structure is the western half of the old American Stock Exchange building, at 86 Trinity Place. The Curb Market, later the Curb Exchange, sold stocks that did not meet the requirements of the New York Stock Exchange, and for half a century they were indeed traded on the curb, that is, through a network of brokers actually out on the streets.
Established in the mid-19th century and completely unregulated in its earliest years, the Curb Market was fertile ground for shady operations, where mining and other stocks were introduced and bid up through false sales, and then dumped when the originators had taken their profits.