When I first started covering Wall Street (when you guys were still in kindergarten) a company named Salomon Brothers & Hutzler was an up-and-coming niche firm that specialized in trading bonds, under the direction of a gentlemanly and far-sighted, second-generation Salomon everyone called Billy.

William Salomon grew the firm, which later dropped Hutzler from its name, into a bond-market giant known mostly inside the securities industry. Its best-known personality was an authoritative money-market economist named Sidney Homer.

First under Billy Salomon and then under his successor, a hard-driving trading expert, John Gutfreund, the firm branched out into stocks and investment banking, both here and abroad, and became very big and very profitable.

Trouble struck in 1991, when a top bond-trading executive was found to have violated U.S. Treasury auction rules. Gutfreund wasn't directly involved, but the abuses occurred on his watch and he was forced out.

Warren Buffett, who had become a major Salomon investor, took over on an interim basis and cleaned up the firm's Wall Street image.

Along the way, in its less-abrasive years, Salomon spawned some major figures inside and outside the industry.

One was Michael Bloomberg, forced out by Gutfreund, who took his partner's share and started a hugely successful data and news-gathering company that carries his name. Now, of course, he's the Mayor of New York City.

Another was Henry Kaufman, a protege of Sidney Homer, who became one of Wall Street's most respected economists.

And a third, among many other illustrious Salomon alumni, was Michael Holland, a familiar face on CNNfn and elsewhere, who now runs his own money-mangement firm.

In recent years, of course, Salomon Smith Barney became the focus of scandals involving its research activities, with analyst Jack Grubman allegedly serving as the poster boy for such wrongdoing.

Last fall, Citigroup, whose predecessor company acquired Salomon in 1997 and merged it with Smith Barney, decided to drop the Salomon name for its brokerage and research operations, and make it just plain Smith Barney.

That firm, which dates its origin back to 1873, was not a barn-burner on Wall Street in recent times, but reflected an image of respectability and integrity. Remember the famous ads in which the actor John Houseman pronounced in stentorian tones: "We make money the old-fashioned way; we earn it."

So starting today, after good times and bad, the Salomon name is just about gone from Wall Street. Another great icon bites the dust.

My sorrowful comment is, too bad.  

Myron Kandel is CNN Financial Editor.