<P> The Bank's staff grew rapidly during the early years, necessitating the need for a new home . Land was bought on a city block encompassing Liberty Street, Maiden Lane, William Street and Nassau Street . A public competition was held and the architectural firm of York & Sawyer submitted the winning design reminiscent of the palaces in Florence, Italy . The Bank's vaults, located 86 feet below street level, were built on Manhattan's bedrock . In 1924, the Fed moved into its new home . By 1927, the vault contained ten percent of the world's entire store of monetary gold . </P> <P> The Fed is an independent financial institution formed within the United States, that works separately from the executive or judicial branches of government . The Federal Reserve System is considered to be an independent agency that exists outside of the cabinet of the executive and its powers are derived directly from Congress . Over the past century, the Fed's power has expanded from its original roles such as a private response to problems in banking systems and to establishing a more effective supervisory role of banking systems in the United States, to its now current position of being a lender of last resort to banking institutions that require additional credit to stay afloat . </P> <P> The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks were established as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system . They are organized much like private corporations--possibly leading to some confusion about ownership . </P> <P> The Federal Reserve Banks have an intermediate legal status, with some features of private corporations and some features of public federal agencies . The United States has an interest in the Federal Reserve Banks as tax - exempt federally created instrumentalities whose profits belong to the federal government, but this interest is not proprietary . In Lewis v. United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: "The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA (the Federal Tort Claims Act), but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations ." The opinion went on to say, however, that: "The Reserve Banks have properly been held to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes ." Another relevant decision is Scott v. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in which the distinction is made between Federal Reserve Banks, which are federally created instrumentalities, and the Board of Governors, which is a federal agency . </P>

How many branches of the federal reserve system were established to operate across the country