52 weekly articles celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Huguenot Memorial Church, researched and written by Archivist Jon Coss.

Edward Purkis Frost was born in Chicago in 1890, possibly related to a partner in the jewelry firm, Black, Starr & Frost, in New York City. (Robert C. Black was a partner and an important benefactor to the Huguenot Church.) E.P. Frost found work in the securities industry in New York and joined Huguenot in 1920. During World War I, he was a lieutenant in the aviation section of the Army Signal Corps and received the French Croix de Guerre.

Brokers yell and signal to boys in second-story windows. Boy signals to brokers on the street.

Returning to New York, Frost became a member of the Curb Exchange – an unregulated, outdoor alternative to the New York Stock Exchange. (It was eventually moved indoors and became the American Stock Exchange.) During the 1930s, he was a partner in Frost & Brown, as a commission broker on the floor of the exchange. During World War II, he was a colonel in the Army Air Force, spending three years in Europe with combat forces. He was wounded in Italy and received the Purple Heart, the Conspicuous Service Cross, and the Bronze Star.

Military Aviator wings (left). Quiet Birdmen membership card. (No photo of him was found.)

Edward P. Frost died in 1950 at age 60. He belonged to the Aviators Post of the American Legion and to the rowdy and ironically-named “Anciente and Secret Order of the Quiet Birdmen.” He was survived by his wife Beatrice and two children.

In 1929 Edward Frost flew on the Graf Zeppelin from New York to Friedrichshafen, Germany.

In the 1870s an Englishman named Edward Purkis Frost (1842-1922) built an “ornithopter” – a large steam-powered flying machine with flapping wings. He intended it to have a 25 hp steam engine but the actual engine with 5 hp was not powerful enough to lift it off the ground. He later was president of the British Aeronautical Society. Little is known about this E.P. Frost, who did not marry or have children. He may have been the namesake of Huguenot’s E.P. Frost.

Sources:

Bell, Blake. “The Age of Lighter-Than-Air Dirigibles in Pelham During the 1920s and 1930s.” 25 Sept 2015. Historic Pelham. https://historicpelham.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-age-of-lighter-than-air-dirigibles.html. “More on the Age of Dirigibles in the Skies Above Pelham.” 2 Nov 2016. https://historicpelham.blogspot.com/search/label/Zeppelin?m=0.

Daly, Ann. “’The New York Curb Market…Which has No Organization Whatever:’ The Enclosure of New York’s Last Outdoor Stock Market, 1900-1921. Gotham Center. 9 Oct 2018. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-new-york-curb-market-which-has-no-organization-whatever-the-enclosure-of-new-yorks-last-outdoor-stock-market-1900-1921

Miller, Tom. Tribeca Citizen. “The History of 113-123 Greenwich Street – The New York Curb Market.” https://tribecacitizen.com/the-history-of-tribeca-buildings/the-history-of-113-123-greenwich-street-the-new-york-curb-market/

New York Times. E.P. Frost obit. https://www.nytimes.com/1950/07/29/archives/edward-p-frost-60-a-securities-broker.html

Wikipedia. American Stock Exchange Building. Quiet Birdmen. E.P. Frost of the U.K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Stock_Exchange_Building

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Birdmen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Purkis_Frost