Chase Manhattan Bank, now part of JPMorgan Chase, was formed by the merger of the Chase National Bank and the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1955. The bank is headquartered in New York City.

"After an epidemic of yellow fever in 1798, in which coffins had been sold by itinerant vendors on street corners, Aaron Burr established the Manhattan Company, with the ostensible aim of bringing clean water to the city from the Bronx River but in fact designed as a front for the creation of New York's second bank, rivaling Alexander Hamilton's Bank of New York."[1]

Chase National Bank (formed in 1877) was named for former United States Treasury Secretary and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, although Chase never had any connection with the latter entity.
A Chase Bank location in Austin, Texas across from the University of Texas at Austin
A Chase Bank location in Austin, Texas across from the University of Texas at Austin

The Chase National Bank was a leading wholesale bank in the 1920s and it acquired a number of smaller banks through its Chase Securities Corporation. Its most significant acquisition though was the Equitable Trust Company of New York in 1930, the largest stockholder of which was John D. Rockefeller Jr. This made it the largest bank in America and indeed the world.

Under his successor, George Champion, the antiquated 1799 state charter was relinquished for a modern one, and under his later successor, David Rockefeller, the bank became part of a bank holding company, the Chase Manhattan Corporation.

As Chase was a much larger bank, it was first intended that Chase acquire the "Bank of Manhattan", as it was nicknamed, but it transpired that Burr's original charter for the Manhattan Company had not only included the clause allowing it to start a bank with surplus funds, but another requiring unanimous consent of shareholders for the bank to be taken over. The deal was therefore structured as an acquisition by the Bank of the Manhattan Company of Chase National, with McCloy becoming chairman of the merged entity. This avoided the requirement of unanimous consent by shareholders. Burr transformed the Manhattan Company from a water carrier into a bank, which is why the Chase logo resembles the cross-section of a wooden pipe.