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 in the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York (state), New York; on the ea ...
, 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
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
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* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
on July 16, 1991, after losses in an overheated real estate market led to a
run
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* Run (island), one of the Banda Islands in Indonesia
* Run (stream), a stream in the Dutch province of North Brabant
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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
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. , AIG companies employed 49,600 people.https://www.aig.com/content/dam/aig/amer ...
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 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, who planned a neo-classical structure for eight stories,
giant order
In classical architecture, a giant order, also known as colossal order, is an order whose columns or pilasters span two (or more) storeys. At the same time, smaller orders may feature in arcades or window and door framings within the storeys tha ...
Corinthian columns, and a $1,000,000 budget. Because the site was diagonally opposite a set of commanding, fortress-like buildings for the
Prudential Headquarters
Prudential Financial, based in Newark, New Jersey, has constructed a number of buildings to house its headquarters downtown in the Four Corners district. In addition to its own offices, the corporation has financed large projects in the city, incl ...
, 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
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* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
in Newark was designed by locally important architects
John H. & Wilson C. Ely. Finished in 1925, it's listed in the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artist ...
. 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, New Jersey, United States. The high school opene ...
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 elderly or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as skilled nursing facility (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to i ...
.
The company moved to larger headquarters at 520 Broad Street in 1957, a modern structure that was built in the
International Style International style may refer to:
* International Style (architecture), the early 20th century modern movement in architecture
*International style (art), the International Gothic style in medieval art
*International Style (dancing), a term used in ...
as part of the ''New Newark'' movement and centered to the north of traditional
downtown
''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers 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 distric ...
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 phase ...
. 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 for businesses and consumers, headquar ...
, to residential and retail space marketed to the city's student population
'
The
Mutual Benefit Life Building in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
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
See also
*
*
List of tallest buildings in Newark
Newark, the largest city in New Jersey and second largest in New York metropolitan area, is one of the United States' major air, shipping, and rail hubs. It has a distinctive skyline, though shorter than that of much larger New York City and s ...
*
History of Newark, New Jersey
Newark has long been the largest city in New Jersey. Founded in 1666, it greatly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, becoming the commercial and cultural hub of the region. Its population grew with various waves of migration in the mi ...
References
Further reading
*
*
Answers.com Mutual Benefit Life
External links
{{Authority control
Defunct financial services companies of the United States
Insurance companies of the United States
Companies based in New Jersey
Insurance company headquarters in the United States
Financial services companies established in 1845
Financial services companies disestablished in 2001
Companies established in 1845
1845 establishments in New Jersey