The Launch of Metropolitan Industrial Insurance

The launching of the Industrial business by Mr. Knapp was the decisive step which saved the Metropolitan and set it on the path of success. The floodgates opened to a huge rush of business. The number of employees increased so rapidly that by 1883, when young Fred Ecker entered the company\'s employ at a salary of $4 per week, there were already more than 200 office workers in a number of separate Divisions.

The few Officers, however, were still sharing many details of the work, and there was comparatively little differentiation of function. President Dow had started, and President Knapp continued, the duty of personally inspecting claims, until the later growth of the business necessitated a separate Claim Division. In the same fashion, the growth and increased demands on every Division necessitated new administrators, new files, and new clerks in the Home Office.

For every employee needed for the original Ordinary Department, many more were required for the Industrial, a business done in nickels and with voluminous weekly records. In 1889, ten years after its inception, the Industrial business in force amounted to $200,829,929 and the Companies assets were $8,597,468.77. These funds required careful investment, and to handle the increasing volume of mortgage loans a Real Estate Division was created. The growing Industrial Department was gradually to absorb, room by room, all the office space reserved for tenants, and before long, hundreds of its Clerks were housed in neighboring buildings.

Mr. Knapp was proudly aware that his undertaking had "arrived," that an organization of permanence and vast scope had been launched. Looking toward its future, he determined that the Company must acquire not only a larger home, but also one more fitting the position it had achieved. He urged a move to 23d Street and Madison Avenue, a residential section then considered far "uptown." At once there was an avalanche of conservative criticism.

Yet his farsighted plan was carried out. The famous Philadelphia architect, Napoleon LeBrun, was engaged to design the building, and in May 1890 the Metropolitan broke ground for a seven story structure in dignified early Renaissance style. Its next door neighbor was the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. A new business center was soon to rise in a section of sober brownstone residences to serve an army of workers in offices and trades.