The 1873 market panic that began in Vienna and helped start the Long Depression was the Panic of 1873.
The collapse began with the Vienna stock-market crash in May 1873, after speculative investment in railways and property had driven prices upward. Credit conditions tightened, confidence deteriorated, and financial stress spread internationally. The failure of the investment firm Jay Cooke & Company in the United States later that year helped transmit the panic across the Atlantic.
The crisis hit railroads, banks, construction companies, and industrial businesses. In the United States, the New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily in September 1873, an unusual response to the financial emergency.
Historians debate the precise boundaries and causes of the Long Depression, and some use different names or dates for the prolonged downturn. The Panic of 1873 is nevertheless widely treated as the event that initiated the era. It was distinct from the Panic of 1893, another major U.S. financial crisis.