The Philadelphia Merchants Exchange was designed by William Strickland, an influential American architect of the 19th-century Greek Revival. Strickland considered the Tennessee State Capitol at Nashville to be his finest work, and he arranged to have himself interred there in a specially built vault. Others believe the Philadelphia Merchants Exchange to be his masterpiece. The stately main block of the building is set off by an elegantly detailed semicircular end wing with an open Corinthian colonnade and a tall columned lantern tower. Also an engineer, Strickland was one of the first to foresee that railroads would become the principal method of transporting goods at a time when canals were dominant.