The Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company was a life insurance company that was chartered in 1845 and based in Newark in Essex County,

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, United States. The company was headed by Frederick Frelinghuysen (1848–1924). The company was known as the "Tiffany" of insurance companies, a reference to its reputation as the life insurance company to the upper classes. Mutual Benefit Life was taken into receivership for rehabilitation by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance on July 16, 1991, after losses in an overheated real estate market led to a run by policyholders, who ultimately lost the purported "cash value" that had been said to have accrued in their policies. At the time, the collapse was the largest ever of an American insurer. AMEV acquired the group life, accident and health insurance Mutual Benefit in 1991. SunAmerica acquired the remaining divisions in 1998. Effective June 14, 2001, Mutual Benefit was liquidated and dissolved.

Landmark buildings

Mutual Benefit commissioned a number of landmark buildings in Newark for their headquarters. After outgrowing previous locations at Broad and Market (from the 1845 founding to 1848), then another ten years in the Insurance Buildings on Market Street, the company built a headquarters at the corner of Broad and Clinton Streets in 1858. The architect is unknown. In 1904, Mutual Benefit pulled down the 1858 structure and commissioned a replacement through competition. The winner was architect

George B. Post George Browne Post (December15, 1837November28, 1913) was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition. Active from 1869 almost until his death, he was recognized as a master of several contemporary American architectural genres, an ...

, who planned a neo-classical structure for eight stories, giant order Corinthian columns, and a $1,000,000 budget. Because the site was diagonally opposite a set of commanding, fortress-like buildings for the

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, also designed by Post, a contrasting identity was a key requirement: "The problem was to design a building as different as possible from the Prudential Building, and at the same time make it indicative of the strength and greatness of an important insurance company." The company's uptown headquarters building at 300 Broadway in Newark was designed by locally important architects John H. & Wilson C. Ely. Finished in 1925, it's listed in the

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. In the mid 1950s the building was sold to the Archdiocese of Newark and served as home to

Essex Catholic High School Essex Catholic Boys High School (formally known as Bishop Francis Essex Catholic High School after 2000) was a four-year Catholic high school located in Newark and East Orange, in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The high school ...

until 1979. The building was again sold, and as of 2018 serves as a

nursing home A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of older people, senior citizens, or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as care homes, skilled nursing facilities (SNF), or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms ...

. The company moved to larger headquarters at 520 Broad Street in 1957, a modern structure that was built in the

International Style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...

as part of the ''New Newark'' movement and centered to the north of traditional

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

at Washington Park. The architects were Frank Grad & Sons of Newark, with consulting architects

Eggers & Higgins Eggers & Higgins was a New York architectural firm partnered by Otto Reinhold Eggers (August 4, 1882 – April 23, 1964) and Daniel Paul Higgins (September 12, 1886 – December 26, 1953). The architects were responsible for the construction phas ...

. As of December 2012 there were plans to convert the building, owned by the

IDT Corporation IDT Corporation (originally standing for International Discount Telecommunications) is a multinational provider of cloud communications, point of sale systems, unified communications, and financial services foreign exchange services for selecte ...

, to residential and retail space marketed to the city's student population' The

Mutual Benefit Life Building The Mutual Benefit Life Building is a twenty-five-floor high rise office building that is located at 1845 Walnut Street on Rittenhouse Square in Center City Philadelphia, 19103. It was placed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in 1 ...

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is another structure associated with the firm. File:US-NJ(1891) p564 NEWARK, MUTUAL BENEFIT LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY.jpg, Broad and Clinton bldg, circa 1891 (razed) File:Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company building in Newark, New Jersey in 1915.jpg, George Post building, circa 1915 (razed) File:Old Mutual Benefit HQ Newark.jpg, 300 Broadway, built in 1925

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External links

{{Authority control 1845 establishments in New Jersey Companies based in New Jersey Companies established in 1845 Defunct financial services companies of the United States Financial services companies established in 1845 Financial services companies disestablished in 2001 Insurance company headquarters in the United States

Landmark buildings

See also

References

Further reading

External links