Tough Beginnings for a New Company

At the new headquarters, Metropolitan Life Insurance thought they had found a permanent home. Definitely, the elegant proportions of the pillars and the fine plate glass partitions, etched with the Company monogram, MLICO, seemed made for eternity. There were such modern improvements as steam heating, and a dignified elevator ran up and down a central shaft surrounded by a staircase. The elevator increased the grandeur of the place, but when the lively home office messenger boys were in a hurry they always walked up and down.

The building included some 65 offices for rental in addition to the part reserved for the company's own use. One of the distinguished tenants was the future President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur, who, as Collector of the Port of New York, paid a rent of $40 a month for his office. The first woman employee, Carrie Foster, started work here in 1877, to remain in the service of the company for 52 years.

Like so many other employees whom Mr. Knapp had imported from his Brooklyn Sunday School group, Miss Foster traveled by ferry across the East River and thence by horse car to work. She took her place in the Record Division of the Ordinary Department with the male bookkeepers, working at their high desks in alpaca coats and green eyeshades.

Letters were handwritten and file copies were duplicated on a hand press. Carrie Foster's fine longhand was soon replaced, however, by the company's first typewriter purchased in October 1877, the forerunner of the many thousands of timesaving office machines eventually owned by the Metropolitan.

Before it could enjoy its magnificence in the Park Place Building, the company was first to pass through critical days. Its primary source of business, the Hildise Bund, was rapidly dwindling, and there was no other major source of replacement of its clientele. In the beginning of 1879 the Metropolitan was limping along with only 145 employees, including clerks in the office and men in the field, and with no more than 10,000 policies in force. The hard pressed young company was barely holding its own.

Before it could enjoy its magnificence in the Park Place Building, the company was first to pass through critical days. Its primary source of business was rapidly dwindling and there was no other major source of replacement of its clientele.