The bank opened for business on November 16, 1914, under Benjamin Strong Jr., a former president of Bankers Trust who would lead the institution until his death in 1928. Strong did not just run the New York Fed -- he effectively invented the role of the modern central banker. In 1922, he unofficially abandoned the gold standard and began using open market operations, the buying and selling of government securities, to stabilize domestic prices. It was a radical departure from two centuries of central banking orthodoxy. John Maynard Keynes cited Strong's work in A Tract on Monetary Reform as proof that a central bank could manage an economy without gold backing. Strong's influence extended to Europe, where he championed efforts to restore economic stability after World War I. Economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger argued that had Strong not died in 1928, a year before the Great Depression, he might have been able to maintain stability in the international financial system.

The building itself emerged from a public architectural competition won by the firm of York and Sawyer, and the bank moved into its new home in 1924. The structure's most famous feature lies underground. The gold vault, designed by Frederick S. Holmes and built by the York Safe and Lock Company, sits on Manhattan bedrock in a space so secure that the bank stores gold at no charge -- it only charges for handling when bars are moved. Most of the gold belongs not to the United States but to foreign governments and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. The vault became a fixture of popular imagination, appearing in television series from The Strain to The Endgame. But its real significance is more prosaic and more consequential: this is where the physical wealth of nations rests in the dark, sorted by compartment number, while the floors above determine the cost of money itself.

The New York Fed's singular status within the Federal Reserve System derives from geography and function. Operating in the financial capital of the United States, it conducts all open market operations -- every purchase and sale of Treasury and agency securities -- through its dealing desk. Its president is traditionally selected as vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy. The bank is the exclusive fiscal agent of the U.S. Treasury, conducting all primary auctions of marketable Treasury securities and carrying out exchange rate policy by swapping dollars with foreign currencies. The Treasury's General Account -- through which nearly all federal revenue flows in and nearly all federal expenses flow out -- resides here. Washington decides policy. Liberty Street executes it.

The New York Fed's enormous power has not shielded it from criticism. In 2009, a self-commissioned probe produced a report by Columbia Business School professor David Beim, who found that supervisors "paid excessive deference to banks" and were "less aggressive in finding issues or in following up on them in a forceful way." The finding landed with particular force in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2012, examiner Carmen Segarra told her superiors that Goldman Sachs lacked a policy governing conflicts of interest; she was dismissed and brought a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit, though the case was dismissed in 2014. These episodes underscored a tension built into the institution's design: the bank that regulates Wall Street also depends on Wall Street's cooperation, and the line between oversight and deference has proven difficult to hold.