expanding the board room, thus extending the Curb Market building into the remaining undeveloped portion of its lot. The board of governors received the plans that May and voted to approve the plan two months later; during this time, in June 1929, the New York Curb Market changed its name to the New York Curb Exchange. The Curb Exchange rehired Starrett & Van Vleck to build the annex. Plans were filed with the city government in January 1930, and construction of the annex started the next month. As part of the expansion, the adjacent Hamilton Building was acquired for $1.2 million. The steel work was about halfway completed when the cornerstone for the annex was laid in July 1930. The expanded structure was dedicated on September 14, 1931. The original building remained largely unchanged, except for the removal of its eastern wall to accommodate the annex. The annex was designed with additional capacity for future growth, and should more space be necessitated, the Hamilton Building could be demolished for yet another expansion. The New York Times said that the new facilities could "take care of markets of much larger size than have yet been witnessed", and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said "in many respects the building is more modern and up to date" compared to the NYSE building. The Curb Exchange soon became the leading international stock market. Sobel stated that the Curb "had more individual foreign issues on its list than [...] all other American securities markets combined." Nevertheless, the Curb's trading volume still suffered during the 1930s and 1940s with the onset of the Great Depression and then World War II. During the war, the Curb Exchange rented out four of the upper floors for defense purposes, and the Curb rented out a floor from the Hamilton Building. The Curb Exchange was renamed the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) in 1953, and the exterior signage on Trinity Place was changed accordingly. The value of shares traded in the AMEX nearly doubled during the 1950s to $23 billion. To accommodate the increased volume, the AMEX filed plans to expand the trading floor in 1967, and subsequently reorganized the trading floor. In 1975, AMEX chairman Paul Kolton indicated that the exchange was studying whether it should split the trading room into two floors. Kolton said that the board of governors had budgeted $100,000 toward studying an expansion as part of a