the administration of the first President George Washington. The new First Bank of the U.S. had been recently established on behalf of private financiers, businesspeople, and the new central U.S. Government in the temporary national capital of Philadelphia. When the First Bank of the U.S. lost its charter two decades later in 1811, Girard bought the bank's landmark Greek Revival-styled building, left his deposited money and accounts there, and reopened as a new financial institution named the "Bank of Stephen Girard" which made him America's first private banker. He then made his second fortune in banking. Stephen Girard used his position as banker to raise the $16 million required for the fledgling U.S. government and personally funded the War of 1812 at the request of President James Madison. By his death, his fortune was approximately $7.5 million. One of the most interesting chapters of Girard's life was his role in fighting Philadelphia's devastating yellow fever epidemic in the summer of 1793. He was instrumental in running the city's hospital at William Hamilton's home, "Bush Hill", using his business skills to better organize the primitive hospital's health care procedures and record-keeping and becoming personally involved in the nursing of patients. With the assistance of noted attorney William J. Duane (1780-1865), in the 1820s, he wrote a long will and testament, outlining every detail of how his fortune would be used. He delighted in keeping the document secret, knowing that everyone wondered what would happen to his fortune. Immediately after he died in 1831, the provisions of his will were made public. In addition to extensive personal and institutional bequests, he left the bulk of his fortune to the city of Philadelphia to build and operate a residential school for impoverished white orphans. This innovative social vision was considered extremely unusual both then and now: to use the Girard fortune not to endow another so-called "Ivy League" college or university but to assist children in need. In 1831, the bequest was the largest single act of philanthropy up to that time in American history. Girard's will became famous for his restriction that students must be "poor, white, male, orphans". One by one, each of those requirements has been removed. For over a century, the school remained for needy white boys. From May 1954, with the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, there was increasing