Andalusia and the Bank War

The estate of Andalusia along the Delaware River was home to Nicholas Biddle, one of the most powerful and ultimately tragic figures in early American finance. Born in seventeen eighty-six, Biddle served as president of the Second Bank of the United States and believed a national bank was essential to economic stability. President Andrew Jackson disagreed fundamentally and vetoed the bank's recharter in eighteen thirty-two in one of the most consequential acts of his presidency.

The clash between Biddle and Jackson became known as the Bank War, and Biddle lost. The bank closed in eighteen forty-one, and the country lurched through a decade of financial panic. Andalusia itself, designed by architects Benjamin Latrobe and Thomas Walter in the Greek Revival style, was named a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-six.