The Frankfurter Bank was founded in 1854 to serve as a
bank of issue for the then-autonomous
Free City of Frankfurt, realizing a project that had long been under discussion but was accelerated by the nearby establishment of the
Darmstädter Bank the previous year. The Frankfurter Bank's notes did not have
legal tender status but enjoyed solid reputation and were accepted beyond the boundaries of the city-state, even after the latter came to an end in 1866. In 1885, the sentence "The Frankfurter Bank in Frankfurt-am-Main has always had a particularly respected position in the commercial world" () was included in the
Meyers Konversations-Lexikon phrasebook. The Frankfurter Bank was allowed to keep issuing banknotes until 1901, even though that activity had become marginal following the establishment of the
Reichsbank in 1875; its banknotes were finally withdrawn on . In the late 19th century, it erected a palatial head office at Neue Mainzerstrasse 69, designed by architect . That building was destroyed during
World War II, then rebuilt in the 1950s on a streamlined monumental design. It was eventually demolished to make way for the skyscraper, erected in the early 1980s. It eventually merged with
Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft, which after 1945 had also relocated to Frankfurt. ==See also==